Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I would like some opinions on what the rest of you guys think this is, if anything at all, based on this picture.

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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

It looks like a normal or het animal out of an anaconda or ppa x red/purple litter. The gold stipe just about split the saddles into a twin spot. Nice looking animal!! So what is it?
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Ultimate Hognose

It looks like a normal or het animal out of an anaconda or ppa x red/purple litter. The gold stipe just about split the saddles into a twin spot. Nice looking animal!!

Interesting analysis Jon. Thanks for taking the time to respond!

So what is it?

I will divulge a couple of other pictures once I get some more opinions.
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

Looks like it could be a low expression anaconda. A belly shot would help.
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Greg Bennett - Western Hognose Morphs | Boa Morphs
520.Hognose (520.464.6673) - www.bennettreptiles.com

The lack of a reduced neck pattern would lead me to believe it's not a low key anaconda. I produced several anaconda sibs this year that had similar patterns and a couple even had all black bellies, but the neck patterns were not reduced and the black on the belly was wide with uneven edges. The condas have a narrow stripe with even edges. I hope I'm right about mine. Otherwise a few people got really good deals on anacondas.
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Ultimate Hognose

The lack of a reduced neck pattern would lead me to believe it's not a low key anaconda.

I'm not so sure that this is a really good marker in determining Anacondas. Have you seen Brent's site lately? In his available page he has a couple of "low key" Anacondas that have normal neck patterns.

I produced several anaconda sibs this year that had similar patterns and a couple even had all black bellies, but the neck patterns were not reduced and the black on the belly was wide with uneven edges.

I believe that the black belly is one indicator of an Anaconda marker but it is not a determining factor for the animal being an Anaconda as there are pure black belly hognose out there that are not Anacondas nor are they related genetically. Here is a picture of one of my 2008's with a 99.9% black belly whose father is a supposed "Lazik" double het and also has a black belly.

The condas have a narrow stripe with even edges.

Jon, are you referring to the outer part of the dorsal coloring?

Here's a couple of pictures comparing my Superconda to my normal Black Belly:

Normal Black Belly

Superconda Belly

I hope I'm right about mine. Otherwise a few people got really good deals on anacondas.

You know, that might be a real possibility! I think the "markers" for Anacondas have been over-simplified by reducing them down to just a few visual traits like reduced neck patterns, solid black narrow dorsals, white outer-dorsal coloration, highly reduced patterns and probably one or two others I'm forgetting. We're basing our opinions solely on what Brent has produced and sold the last couple of years but we have to remember, his Anacondas come from bloodlines within his collection, so we do not currently know what exactly might come from the Anaconda genes when they are mixed with outside sources. Let us consider the fact that Brent's 2008 Anacondas that he sold had pretty much the same overall look to them regardless that some were a bit more stunning than the others, that's just typical. But then look at some of the really wild stuff he started producing in 2009. Were those animals mixed with newer bloodlines or were they something more like F2 or F3 lines? Some of those Anacondas were really deviant from what we saw in 2008 with the vanishing patterns and some of those super light colored animals. Now we're in 2010 and we're seeing even more wild variations with all of the new bloodlines being introduced.

I think we're just scratching the surface with this morph and what it might produce when mixed with all of the variant bloodlines and morphs we currently have at our disposal to work with. I think it's going to get more interesting as the years progress.

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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

DOH, replace all the "dorsal" words with "ventral". That's what happens when I'm multitasking, my brain freezes up. I wish we had an edit feature here.
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

Well now you have me thinking. I produced a litter of 24 out of an anaconda breeding and only got 8 condas. Some of the others were twinspots, but none of them had any conda'ish look to them. I figured I just got screwed on the odds, but what if some were gene carriers and looked basically normal?? I'll post some pics up here if you don't mind. Care to share a belly shot if yours now?
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Ultimate Hognose

In my opinion thats an low key anaconda,a belly shot would help,please post some more photos.
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Brent Bumgardner
bwbumgardner@aol.com
703.431.1776
Superconda Website

First off, I would like to thank Jon, Greg and Brent for playing along.

I initially held off on showing the belly pictures because I wanted to get unbiased views based on the dorsal patterning alone just to see what everybody thought. To be honest, I'm still not 100% sure what this hognose is, but I'm placing my bets on it being a "low key" Anaconda as Greg and Brent have suggested as well.

This animal comes from a pairing of my Anaconda male to a het Albino female. Out of the 19 eggs that hatched from that clutch, 10 are easily definable Anacondas with this 1 being the oddball. If it is an Anaconda, and I believe it is, then that would make it 11 Anacondas out of 19 hatchlings with an Anaconda hatch ratio of ~58%.

I would like to reiterate what I previously said in the fact that I think there's more to defining an Anaconda than just the "markers" that others are going by alone. I think my anomaly here will help in determining if those markers really hold up.

Here are all 3 pictures of my anomaly:

Top

Bottom (1)

Bottom (2)

Now, let's base this animal against the some of the "markers" that we use to define an Anaconda.
#1 Overall reduced or aberrant pattern - No
#2 Reduced neck pattern - No
#3 Black belly - Yes
#4 Narrow black belly - No
#5 White outer edging on ventrals - Yes

I would presume that most people would suggest that this animal is in fact a normal when compared amongst other normals just going by the dorsal view alone. Only the keen eye would pick out the other factors by looking at the ventrals.

For comparison, here's one of the sibling Anacondas which I think is a classic Anaconda phenotype.

Top

Bottom

Unfortunately I could not get better belly pictures as this little guy just would not sit still. But it's worth pointing out that if you look really carefully at his ventrals you will notice that he seems to have a bit more speckling than is typically found in Anacondas. Obviously this is far more apparent in real life than a picture taken through a plastic container. I am not sure if this will go away after a few sheds or come out more. What interests me is the fact that this is without a doubt an Anaconda but he has a more than normal amount of speckling on his ventrals (at least based on my Anacondas and Superconda). The anomaly's belly is a far more solid black with maybe 2-3 very very small speckles.

Let's use the same 5 questions against this classic Anaconda:
#1 Overall reduced or aberrant pattern - Yes
#2 Reduced neck pattern - Yes
#3 Black belly - Yes, but about 95-98%
#4 Narrow black belly - No
#5 White outer edging on ventrals - Yes

So, let's try to compare the 2 against each other.

#1 Do both snakes have an overall reduced or aberrant pattern? No
#2 Do both snakes have a reduced neck pattern? No
#3 Do both snakes have black bellies? Yes, but the anomaly has a 99.9% black belly while the Anaconda has probably a 95-98% black belly.
#4 Do both snakes have narrow black bellies? No
#5 Do both snakes have white outer edging on their ventrals? Yes

To be honest, I just don't know what to classify my anomaly 100% as (although I'm pretty sure it's an Anaconda) but I'm going to keep it for future breeding projects to try and prove out exactly what it is we're dealing with.
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

Troy, I wish I could have played along, but alas, I have no anaconda experience yet. LOL. I do thank you for the knowledge that you have imparted. I'm sure many of us have learned something about the anaconda gene.

Wendell

Sincerely Wendell, thank you for your kind acknowledgement!
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles