Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Can anyone offer tips on how to accurately identify a sawarak and to differentiate it from a borneo. Is there any differences in scalation (especially under the eye?).
Thanks for any input,
Mike

Hey Mike. The row of scales below the eye is used to distinguish python brongersmai (red blood) with a single row of scales from the Python breitsteini(borneo) and curtus (sumatran) both having a row of very small scales and a row of lg scales between the eye and mouth. As to determining between the breitensteini and curtus you have to go to head scales and that is a little tougher to explain if you interested see the sight below it was writen by people much smarter than me and has tons more info.Now all of this gets very confuseing especially when you use commmon names because I personally have heard brongersmai refered to as red blood, true blood, sumatran ,maylasian blood and curtus refered to as Sumatran and black blood Now breitenstsini has always been pretty cut and dry with borneo stp but with the new intraduction of the Sawarak which is a location on the island of borneo I expect it will get even worse. I do not know that there is a clear way to determin if the local is a sawarak but I would imagine that with most local animals it is pretty limited to knowing the original importation of the animals linage to be certain. I'm sure people more familiar with sawaraks can give you typical traits.

Hope this is as clear as mud

www.bio.usyd.edu.au/Shinelab/shine/reprints/295heavilyexploited.pdf

And of course the animals don't always help either here is one of my brogersmai which is chocalate brown in apose to brick red like it is "suppose" to be

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thanks
Kevin
I am lost w/o spell check

np

Hey,
As far as the Sarawak's are concerned, there is no scientific evidence pointing to a specific difference between them and the Borneo's of which they are closely related, and are considered the same species. The DNA profile conducted did not prove them to be a different species and thus share the same scientific moniker as the Borneo short-tail from Kalimantan. The geographical isolation of the Sarawak to the west, and on the Malaysian side of the island over the Penambo range of mountains, unfortunately, did not prove them out to be a different enough species warranting separate classification. The Borneo short-tail, has a small group of granular scales just under the eyes, and above the labial scales.

-Angel

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"Until we lose our self, there is no way of finding our self."
-Henry Miller.