Reptile & Amphibian Forums

OK, I didn't take the photo, so you can't blame me for lousy quality...

Can you tell I'm procrastinating writing ma Grant proposal?
Wish me luck, it's for research on anaoconda babies.

...and once I'm done writing the grant, maybe I'll get a job as a secretary to take advantage of my fabulous typing skills...

In this "tail end" of a breeding ball you can see the spur, actually in action (were it on video). The spur is right next to the scale marking. Scales grow back black, but you can still count them. (This, along with drawing the pattern of the 15 scales below the cloaca, make identification possible, better than any other methods we tried.)

What makes this breeding ball interesting - that, yes, is in captivity but was found in the wild, huge, 10 males - is that it supports the theory about male size being limited (in part) by breeding ball activity: once the males are "in" the ball, there is no easy way to decipher the female by smell, or any chemoreception I know of, because by that point her smell is all over the immediate area. So, tactile sense, to detect the largest sized tail, is of primary importance.

The snakes pictured here are not wrapped around the female, however, they are wrapped around the tail of a really big male in the ball, making it impossible for him to mate...and thus the mini-me genes are passed on more readily than those of really big males.

Ok, back to work.

R