Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have read on several care sheets that male green anacondas do not get as large as the females. On NERD's care sheet it states that males over ten feet are rare. Is this true or not?

Also if any one else knows of any other good care sheets please feel free to tell me.

mike

As from what I understand, the male greens don't get as "large" as the females because they don't have to support all that weight to carry babies. Generally, males are much smaller, and in captivity, depending on what you feed it and how often, males will generally stay under 12 feet. I heard from a friend that there was a 12 ' male green anaconda at the daytona show last year. I didn't see him, but i'm sure he was there. =) It all depends on how you raise him man. Here's a Pic of my female and male. both are the same age, but one is quite a bit larger. Enjoy, and Good luck. =)

James

Mike,
Field research has shown this to be true. In the Rivas study, males green anacondas over 10 feet and/or more than 30 pounds were virtually non-existent. The male a good friend of mine owns is the largest I have personally dealt with at 11.5 feet and 65 pounds. He is 13 years old and for a male is a true giant. He produced a second generation captive born litter of young with my female in 2001, and bred with a different female this Spring and she is now gravid. He is an outstanding animal and is the most docile large constrictor of any species I have ever seen. All the young produced in the 2001 litter had his same, totally calm, disposition. Some of the young we kept are a year and a half old now and still remain as docile as the male. But back to your original question. Rivas has a good theory that male greens are much smaller because they breed in aggregations with a single female and up to 10 to 12 males. In these breeding groups where visibility is greatly limited, he feels males may have difficulty distinquishing other males from the female using visual or chemoreceptive cues. They are limited to essentially tactile cues to identify the female. Males, he believes, locate the female by her larger size, and a large male could be mistaken for a female and result in wasted effort. Selective pressure has therefore produced males of a smaller optimum size. It sounds like a good theory that could explain the sexual dimorphism seen in the green anaconda. Hope this helped.

Kelly

I am thinking about getting an anaconda, and if I do I'm going to build a cage. I do have some knowledge about building since I work also with monitors. Anyway how does this cage sound for an adult male green.... 8X5X4(LxWxH) I was going to build it 3/4 land 1/4(or maybe something diferent..any other sugg...?)water with a drain pipe that leads to some kind of container for easy disposal. How does this sound anything I should do to make it better.

Thanks for all the help. Mike

Mike,
I think that would be plenty large for a male. We keep all of our adult male and females separately in 8' Neodesha cages. A water pool is your choice but not a necessity. None of our neonates all the way up to adults have had anything other than a small water bowl. We do however keep the humidity a little higher, in the 70 to 80 % range. Lack of a pool doesn't appear to have any negative affect on them. We have raised up a fair number of them this way and they have been some of the healthiest and most problem free green anacondas I have ever seen in captivity. The interesting thing is that breeding has not been affected either. We had the 2001 litter and have the different gravid female now. Pools are a nice addition but they can be a maintenance headache, especially with a larger one. If you do go with the pool, be a fanatic about keeping it clean. I feel that a lot of the problems people have with anacondas may stem from contaminated pool water. Post a photo of your cage when completed. Thanks,

Kelly

Sexual dimorphism in green anacondas is the greatest of any quadruped species (which would include all reptiles, amphibians, mammals and birds). Yeah, a rare male can get to 65 pounds, but females can be more than 5 times that.