Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone keep or have pictures of red-tailed green rat snakes?

Just curious how common they are in collections and if anyone is producing captive breds.

Thanks
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~~~Hurley

I have about 5.7 at the moment. I'm not sure on actual numbers because a friend and I just got another group and have not divided them up yet.

They are produced fairly consistently in Europe but not as often in the US. Many keepers, myself included, are able to get fertile eggs but they fail to hatch. There are loads of threads on this in the archives.

Last year I got a clutch of five but had to move when they were at about 80 days of incubation. I took the incubator to a friends and unfortunately it was left unplugged for a week. 100% my fault and I paid the price for it - I lost all the eggs.

The female continued to lay fertile eggs even though she had not been re-introduced to the male. Unfortunately I lost those eggs in a flood.

She is now copulating with the male again and I'm hoping for eggs, obviously. If I'm able to hatch the eggs I will be keeping all of the babies for myself.

But to answer your question, this species is produced in small numbers in the US but the babies are fairly difficult to get ahold of.

Here's a picture my adult male.

Here is a picture of a female import I received last winter. When my friend took this picture it came out so bright I had to tone down the color in photoshop to make it look like she did in real life.

With every shed she has changed in color and now is a mix of gray, orange, yellow, and green. She looks nothing like this photo anymore.

This female and the male in the above post are both from the island of Java. On Java this species appears to be polymorphic. If you talk to importers of this species they will tell you that from a single clutch you will get specimens that are green, greenish-yellow, orange, and grey/yellow.

The grey/yellow specimens are typically called the Java form, but that is misleading since green appears to be the most common form on that island and several other colors are found there.

I don't know if this color variation is found throughout other parts of their range. I suspect it does.

Wow. THAT is a gorgeous snake. Amazing photo.

Thanks for the info. I'll search again, for some reason I couldn't bring up any hits when I was searching (figured it was just my computer) so thanks for answering my questions.
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~~~Hurley