Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here is the new acquisition- I got him a little over a month ago. He is a very slender, 7 ft. male. He looks every bit his WC status, but he is quite handleable, and is an eating machine. There is quite widespread scale damage, but it is mostly surface problems that will clear up with a few more sheds. Eventually, I hope to pair him with the female below.

This top shot got marred a bit by his tongue, but I'm pretty hopeless at photography anyway. For his slender build he has a very pronounced and proportionately large head. I'm assuming him to be older than my female partly on the basis of this, despite her greater size.

And again, here wrapped around the butt end of a field hook.

Here is a head shot- the irridescence on these guys starts on the head and runs the length of the body. This snake in particular (female papuan) dislikes open spaces, and thus taking a picture is a much larger ordeal than it seems. She is quite tractable, but when set down in an open area, starts darting around quickly. She's also getting large enough that she is can hold on to many different things at once, making the process that much more fun. Needless to say, I very seldom try to take pictures.

Same snake, slightly different position.

Very nice pics, don't be too hard on yourself. I love these snakes and consider them my favorites of my entire collections. I have a Trio that will hopefully breed for me in 3 years or so...Good Luck with yours!

Shawn

They are the favorites of my collection as well. Just a joy to watch, to handle, etc. Really easy going snakes, too, in my limited experience. Once they get used to their surroundings, they are very predictable and tend to telegraph their desires- makes it really easy to avoid getting tagged. I hope to introduce mine in late fall '05, so yeah, a couple more years before they are ready. Good luck with yours and keep us posted as they grow.

Nice looking snakes. Good luck with them.
Justin J

Havent shown this in a while. Any how remember when papuans were like 2 grand? lol. I paid $1500 for my male. Well I had a whole bunch of females and this one male the guy I had for about 10 years. Until this one day I was trying to breed him to this one female. Hmmm I guess she was just hungry. I introduced them and left for a few hours came back and thats all I saw. It was a pretty disgusting site. I had always "heard" papuans would eat snakes but had never really seen it. Even if you go down to the importers you can see papuans hanging out in the same cage. I have also heard of Papuans eating retics in the wild. And other reptiles. So they are reptile predators. Just some info you might be interested in. I no longer work with papuans they were at one time one of my favorite snakes. The female shown is actually about 8 feet + in length but so was the male!!! So she had to pack him all in her head looks so tiny. This picture was taken from a video camera.