Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I love these Chocolate Bananas....too cool for school
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Tom Stevens
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TomsSnakes.com
twitter.com/TomsSnakes

strange looking splendida you got there! jk. Awesome looking cal king!

Yeah, those are really nice Tom!

Hey, did those originate from Don Shores stuff by any chance, or somewhere else?........very nice either way!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Definitely very "different" looking.....
Cool kingsnakes......Not many working with them either.......

Great looking chocolate banana calikings.......
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

Nice, I sold mine off a couple of years ago. The only one I kept is an Albino Chocolate Banana male.

Kerby...
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I would like to ask a question without starting any arguments.
What is it that drives the creation of all these designer snakes? Is it the desire to see just how far you can go to change the natural look? Is it competition to see who can do it first?
What !!!!!!!!!!
I have been asking myself this question since back in the 1950s when people were breeding budgies (parakeets) and cockatiels with patchy colors. I guess it's the same with dogs, cats, and tropical fish.
I'm not trying to put anyone down - I'm just looking for the motivation. I like to look at the natural paterns and not have to say "you're kidding" when you say that's a cal king.
theOLDherper
Pete

I think that question would better be directed at Rainer (Blue Rosy). lol There's a lot more stuff going on with the Florida kings than the CA kings as far as mixing genes goes. I'm sure you've seen that first hand here. These Chocolate bananas are not way different than what you would see in nature. That pattern doesn't show up on the hypers in nature but it does show up on the Newporters. Personally, I'd take the natural look over the captive bred look because I know first hand how rare these looks can be in nature. Once you get them in the hands of captive breeders, that appreciation is lost a lot of the time unfortunately. To each his own and I don't down these guys for doing what they want as long as they don't release this stuff into the wild. lol I think a lot of these morphs are really cool looking and if they can help get more people to appreciate snakes, I'm all for it.
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Ross
I am with you 100%.
It is facsinating to see what is possible but I still prefer natural.
By the way - where in Ca are you located?
theOLDherper
Pete

I'm in L.A. If you have Brian Hubbs book on Common Kingsnakes you can see a couple of my wild caught morphs that made the book. I've been lucky enough to find about 10 different morphs here in So Cal that are considered "tough finds", some very tough. Its taught me that all these aberrant Cal kings we see in captivity are taken for granid because of how numerous they are. That's the reason why I have more appreciation for morphs that occur in nature when it comes to CA kingsnakes, only because I've experienced it first hand. I also have more appreciation for any kingsnake morph that is expressing a singe recessive gene because those could possibly be found in nature. I am not at all against mixing multiple genes, some are beautiful, but just not my cup of coffee.
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Wow, that's really cool. You can see they used the Newporter from So Cal and the hypermelanistic gene from up north to produce this morph.

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