Reptile & Amphibian Forums

With all the dwarfs coming around, dwarf retics and now a dwarf burm, I wonder if anyone is working on a dwarf green.

` I think that the dwarf Retics and Burms came from locality races that were already small, and have been hybridized for color.
` There may already be a semi-dwarf species of Anaconda that is smiliar to a green. The huge island of Marajo, in the mouth of the Amazon, supposedly has a race of Anacondas of a different species, Eunectes De Schauenseei (sic). The mouth of the Amazon is over 200 miles wide, so this is a large island, and not yet well explored by herp taxonomists.
` There is little published, but from the little I've found, De Schauensee's Anaconda is described to look like a Green, except for the head, which looks like a Yellow's. One article I read, said that they are not as large as most Greens. As far as I know, there are two sub-species of Greens, at this time, E. murinus murinus, and E. murinus gigas. I haven't been able to discover if the gigas subspecies has that name in reference to size, compared to other Greens, or not.
` As far as captive breeding of dwarf Green Anacodas, there has to be a demand, and I don't think there is one. I hope a demand doesn't occur. Too many people want Anacondas, and other snakes, for the wrong reasons. It's awfully hard on the animals.

` To your previous question: Yellows grow fast, but since they don't get huge, it doesn't seem as fast as a Burm, or a Green Anaconda. The females seem to grow faster than the males, but that's because they get so much bigger. It's all subjective.
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DFR is correct in that Eunectes deschauenseei is intermediate in size between E. murinus and E. notaeus and apparently is more closely related to the yellow anacondas than the greens. There is little information available on the size differences between the northern green anaconda, E. murinus gigas, (Orinoco River basin region) and the southern green, E. murinus murinus, (Amazon River basin region). Also, the validity of the two subspecies is in debate as there is very little difference between them. From field studies and accounts I have read, it appears that the southern green anaconda, E. m. murinus, apparently attains a slightly larger adult size than the northern form, E. m. gigas. Their trinomial names were assigned well before accurate size data was available and the name gigas was actually first used in the early 1800's. Hope this helped answer a few questions.

Kelly