Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi
During the 80-90`ties more Asian ratsnakes started to get more established within the hobby especially thanks to Klaus-Dieter Schulz, who bred and spread many species within the hobby. The albino fewer also started spreading and the older species dissappeared slowly. Then the Bern-Convention protected most European species in all their distribution, and they started to decline in numbers amongst the hobbyists. None of them are very productive and needs some years growing to maturity, and they tends to produce many more males in their clutches than females. All together they started to dissapear. Zamenis situla (Elaphe) has always been searched for because of its nice coloration, but even they has been rarer within the hobby. Some color form has practically or totally dissapeared from the hobby. The black and white situla, the unicolored form of muenteri previously called rechingeri, and the adult scalaris keeping the juvenile coloration are gone. The melanistic longissima, all muenteri are very rare and all quatuorlineata and all locality animals are so rare that they might dissapear in few years.
All together it dosn`t looks very nice for the european ratsnakes. We will not get any new blood and the material we have to work with is limited.
Therefor it is nice to see that there is a growing interest in USA for these animals. Scalaris is allready more represented ower there than here in Europe. We are very few breeders here, that tries to keep our strains clean with a distint locality, but we are so few and it needs many animals. I try to keep 2 strains of situla. I have bred them in 7 generation and keep more than 35 animals to insure that there is no inbreeding, but even I have been trading/selling more than 200 juveniles, I haven`t heard of much breeding from them. It takes too long and there is no money in keeping these species. That is maybe right. They don`t produce enough to make serious money, but they are adorable animals, and I would hate to see them gone from our hobby.
Best wishes
Søe

Reptilia-Denmark

Thanks for taking the time to share your information and experiences. Sometimes keepers in the United States take things for granted, want everything immediately, and are not patient. This will not work with the rarity of the species and locales mentioned in your post. We often don't realize how good we have things over here, at least on a scale relative to the rest of the world.

Hopefully more of the Eurasian species will become established in captivity "on both sides of the pond".

There's... there's a melanistic longissma?

I've yet to even see a normal one! ;^0^; Where are people hiding these things?
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

Hi
Yes there is a melanistic longissima comming from Loir Valley France within our hobby, and they have been here since the 80`ties. I still keep and breed them, but they are very rare and I have only bred 1,2 since 1989. The rest has been normal colored.
Best wishes
Søe
Reptilia-Denmark

Very interesting post. It's great to hear a view from someone from your part of the world that has as good of a grasp of the local varieties including different color types that were available 20 years ago in Europe and what there is available now.
If you have a picture of a black and white situla I would love to see it. I have never even heard that such a color situla existed.
I think that there is definatly more of a move from U.S. breeders(especially small breeders) over the last few years to obtain, raise and breed more rare asian and european species than in the past. There are some that have always specialized in asians or europeans but I am speaking about breeders in general. I think the asians have been much easier to obtain and now with some people always looking for the unusual many more of the european species are now being sought out than in the past or atleast that is how it seems from conversations I have had with other breeders.
If you ever make it with some of your offspring to the National Reptile Breeders Expo in Daytona, FL in august I will definatly bring my wallet to visit you. Thanks for sharing.
Later, Randy Whittington

PS Beautiful Situla.

Hi Soe.

Nice pic...Yugoslavian?

I think the situla are perfect. I like the color, the small size, and even the small clutches. I don't want to compete with lots of other breeders, and don't want the snakes to be too common. Of course, I'd like to have many bloodlines. I think they eat very well, right out of the egg, and are pretty easy to care for. They are fiesty too.

I suppose you've noticed the eggs look like racer eggs, since you've hatched out so many. They have those "specs" all over them giving a rough surface look. Do you think they could be related to the European racers in any way? My pet theory is that an Asian colubrid with both ratsnake and racer characteristics radiated to the west, past the Himalayan Mtns., giving rise to the Zamenis ratsnakes in southern Europe.

Oh, well, there's one European I'm keeping anyway. I remember the days when breeders kept many European species. You're right...there was no money in it and breeders gave them up. I gave them up for other reasons. Today, there's some new interest, but still not much of a market. I hope they can maintain their monetary value, so there will be several lines maintained of each.

Take care, ol' friend

Terry

Maybe its time for someone here to start a "studbook" of sorts, keeping a record of all the individuals of the European rats in captivity in the US and Europe.

Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to start one and it would give us a better feel for how well these dissappearing species are represented in captivity.

It is a pity that European rats weren't more popular. I had some sauromelas about 10 years ago that were captive born, but with a rather questionable paper trail (they were given to me). I raised them up and decided to get rid of them but had trouble getting someone to take the group of 2.3 yearlings!

Now I am sure there would be a line at the door!
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Chris Harrison

...he was beginning to realize he was the creature of a god that appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers - W. Somerset Maugham

Hi
After keeping and breeding the european ratsnakes for more than 20 years, I have seen many nice animals disappearing from our hobby. Even when I cut back on my collection selling almost all, I still kept my favorites. Now when I have the space and time again, I cannot find any of them. I had the most colorful gloydi I have ever seen and many scalaris in various color forms, but none of the buyers maintained them till now. Here in Denmark I sold 22 gloydi, but they are all gone, and I hate myself for selling these beauties. I have realised that if I want to maintain my strains, I can only rely on myself and therefor I have all to many of each species or locality in order to keep the strains clean without inbreeding. This summer I had more than 50 situla (Greek and Youguslavian)and then there came some juveniles I have been wanting for many years. Way back I had a striped and blotched wild caught male from Peleponnes Greece, but none of his offsprings had this coloration. Now 4 generations later they suddently appear, and I want to keep them off course. That was too many situla ( I have a few other animals........)so I traded some and is down to about 35 now mainly Greek animals. I prefer the Greeks because they variate so much in their colors. Youguslavian animals looks more or less the same.
The black and white situla came origionally from Kreta Greece. The were bred in few generations in Germay, but I was newer so lucky to get any. I believe they are gone now.There are 2 pictures in K-D Schulz book Tabel 31 C-D.
Chocolad colored situla from Malta and Sicily also seems to have vanished from our hobby.
The european racers and Zamenis are very different from each other and I dont think they are close related.Looking at the eggs, behaviour and brumation time I think that our racers are more related to scalaris than to Zamenis.
The picture shown before was a light colored Greek female.
I have hoped for a maintenance group for many years. It is just difficult to find breeders that will make the offers to breed a certain species or locality for at least 3 generations. It is about time, because we don`t get new blood, and our breeding material is declining.
Best wishes
Søe
P.S. A pic of the mentioned striped/blotched male

Reptilia-Denmark

It appears that you are quite knowledgeable of the European species of Elaphe. Perhaps you can enlighten us about the difference between Zamenis and Elaphe, since you are adopting the new name Zamenis situla? I search in vain in Utiger et al. for a summary of the differences between these two genera. The only reason I can fathom for their proposed taxonomic change is an ideological intolerance of paraphyletic taxa. In the process they have created a paraphyletic group of their own, which is the common ancestor of Elaphe mandarina and all the other ratsnakes, plus some of the extinct species. Since there are many fossil European ratsnakes in museums, these snakes would be nameless unless they can be identified with living species. The curators of these museums cannot assign their fossils to any of the living genera since these fossils cannot be compared to the living genera morphologically (given the fact that the extant genera are not distinguishable from one another mrophologically) and since mtDNA is unavailable from the fossils. Without mtDNA data, the fossil species cannot be classified "phylogenetically."