Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I saw your post down on the forum, figured i'd post my reply up here where it'd be more easily seen. lol.

I've seen you on Nat Geo pretty often, as I'm a nat geo freak with a few friends who appear on it every once in a while, and aspire to be one of their photographers eventually.. Wanted to say good job with all your work on green condas.. Nice to see other females in the hobby with a real love for the animals.

So anyhow.. I have a captive bred and born green anaconda, from a pair of LTC or captive born adults that reside at the Goldbar Serpentarium here in Washington state. The female is roughly 14', and the male is around 8-9'. They're set up in an aquatic acrylic tank, with a large suspended mix of driftwood thats about a foot above the water level, with basking lamps point down on the wood. I personally don't know the age of these animals, but they're very healthy, and are kept together year round and have for several years. They started breeding around November 28th, to about October 7th of '02.. I visit the serpentarium constantly, mainly to take photos of their animals, so I kept a pretty close eye on the big female conda, as i've always loved them and wanted one of their babies. lol. Anyhow, I took various photos of them breeding, of her very fat and gravid, then of the babies.. I missed their birth, which was sad.. oh well. Would of been nice to get pics of them being born or shortly there after.. Anyhow, they were born around August 13th I believe, of '03.. My boyfriend being the wonderful guy he is bought me one of them for my birthday. So I now have a little female from this litter named Yaku, which is Incan for "water".. Not quite south american, but no biggie. heh.

I had a question for you.. Most of the green condas I see have bright orange face stripes.. But the whole litter of these babies have mostly grey stripes.. Some of them had no orange at all.. Mine had a nice median of the two.. Wonder if there is a certain locality that has this? Or is it just normal.. Most of these babies also have 3 rows of small orange dots down the neck to about mid body.. Turning to 2 the rest of the length..

So here's pictures for you.. Figured you'd like to hear the story and see these pics, of healthy breeding captive animals.

Something else I thought interesting. DFR says he's seen his yellow males only coil tightly and leave sperm plugs in the presense of other males, but as you can see, this green behaved this way with no other male ever present. Also left at least TEN sperm plugs.. They were everywhere. lol. Guess he's just a good breeder.

Taken October 4th '02(taken with a crappy digital. lol)

Very gravid, taken June 14 '03

Babies at 1 month old..

And Yaku, my little female.. Taken the day I brought her home on October 4th '03

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DarkWave Exotics

Currently keeping:
1.2 southern scrub pythons
1.0 reticulated python
1.0 albino burmese python
1.1 jungle carpet pythons
1.0 irian jaya carpet python
0.1 blood python
4.0 ball pythons
0.1 green anaconda
1.1 amazon tree boas
1.2 colombian redtail boas
1.1 argentine boas
1.0 sonoran boa
1.0 cancun boa
0.1 bullsnake
1.2 albino and het albino chinese beauty snakes
1.2 taiwan beauties
2.2 cornsnakes
3 sandfire bearded dragons
0.1 nile monitor
1.0 savannah monitor
1.5 leopard geckos

and lots of bugs, furry critters, fish and birds

N/P

Kestrel, I see that the babies were kept in a mostly aquatic setup. What kind of filtration was used? Do you utilize this same setup? I was just curious as to whether they might do better in this type of setup versus a mostly dry setup. Thanks..

Excellent photographs of the anacondas. The young have very nice coloration. The adult female is really nice and looks to be in outstanding condition. Do you know the age of the female and the litter size?
That's a good question on the ocular stripe coloration in green anacondas. I would be very interested to hear Renee's response as she would be one of the few who has the amount of experience with greens to answer it. In very general terms it has appeared that the northern population, the Orinoco River basin population tends to have the yellow-orange ocular stripe compared to the mostly green ocular stripe of the Amazon Basin population. However, there have apparently been exceptions and this has not been accepted by some as a definitive characteristic of locality. I believe Renee could add much more information on this topic from what she has experienced.

I think the name you chose is good because it is South American, as the Incas were centered around Peru.

Kelly

Hi there, and thanks so much for the info. Sounds like you've got quite a menagerie, a little like when I lived in Venezuela. we even had an orphan capybara - drank 8 baby bottles of formula a day!

Nice photos. By the way, I've got a bearded dragon Q for you, maybe I'll find you on that forum.

I've attached a pic of the typical Venezuelan green female, and she's just that - typical coloring. The color morphs are curious, and no doubt there are morphs for different regions, although as you know different color morphs become more common among captive interbreeding, as well, and gets a bit confused (i.e., one may be breeding a Brazilian girl with 2 or 4 males from different regions, and who knows what ends up in the mix after this happens a few times).

I can't say that I've seen one specific morph for Brazil, as in, "no orange stripe", they definitley do have the orange stripe there, at least some...however then again I haven't observed nearly as many greens from Brazil as I have in Venezuela.

I can tell you what I have observed; sometimes the babies' color isn't as pronounced as it is in the larger adults, it actually gets more pronounced - orange - over time. And also once in a while we would get a smaller adult green, typically a male, that had a very dull to almost green-grey stripe. So, coloring did vary on occasion, oft times we'd notice if a snake was particularly "bright" or more dull greenish gray overall, for example.

It's a good question. Since the juveniles have SO many predators, caiman, raptors, and everything else, and the adults so few, the life of the juveniles certainly predicts, primarily, which "morph" will survive most frequently. It wouldn't be a surprise if there is some variation depending on region, since microhabitats will be somewhat different. For examlple, in Venezuela and Columbia most of the greens live in the llanos - flooded savanna - where they hide most of the time (when feeding, at least) under thick water hyacinth. The orange stripe blends just perfectly with the orange-brown of the stems and other plant parts of the hyacinth, and since it is usually just the head, or nose, sticking above the water that is visible, the camouflage is wonderful; the orange breaks up the outline of a head, and blens in as well. Mother Nature at her best. In larger (deeper) tributaries, there certainly will still be a lot of hyacinth nearby, but also many other species of floating vegetation may be dominant, therefore the orange stripe may or may not be useful; if all the vegetation is green (like, say, those giant lily pads of Brazil) the orange stripe may actually draw attention to the observant predator.

The orange also has another use, undoubtedly a result of convergent evolution: the large electric eels we saw in the llanos also have a little orange on the sides of the head, so much so that one volunteer grabbed at the eel swimming by, thinking it was a green, and got a BIG jolt to remember for a while (those eels get to 6 feet long).
Then again, the local storks seem to be able to avoid the charge; they enjoy eating eels often. Maybe this coloration is thus only useful to dissuade overzealous herpers!

So, as with most morphs and physiology, it's a question of environment, what populations have established where and for how long, etc. For snakes and lizards, variations in color morphs are common, generally speaking, followed by birds, and then perhaps mammals.

Happy Holidays everyone!

I'll see if I have a scanned photo of babies...

Renee