Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi All,

I recently purchased a new scrub, but I am uncertain as to which type of scrub it is. One possibility I am considering, after viewing a photo on the web, is an Aru Island, but I am by no means convinced.

Anyhow, here is a pic, and three more should follow, if I'm doing this correctly. If any of you think you know what type of scrub this is, I'd appreciate hearing what you think.

Thanks in advance,
Steve

second pic

third pic

forth and final

This shows her pattern a bit better.

Well, since no one has answered, I thought I'd go ahead and offer. That scrub appears to be a very dark barneck. I'm basing my opinion of this on both her coloration and the horizontal bars running just behind the head, as well as the size. I doubt you'd find many Arus either that size, or that color. She is probably young still, though, and will likely, if she's truly a barneck, reach pretty impressive sizes. I would expect a minimum of 10' and a maximum of 15'. Good luck with her, she's beautiful whatever she is.
-Chance

Thanks for info. I've considered barneck, and you very well may be correct, what made me think it might be something else was the body pattern, regardless of the darkness. I suppose this could be a pattern that I am not familar with, but the barnecks I have seen have either had what I would describe as a ringed (or perhaps barred) pattern, or, other than the neck barring, be basically patternless, or, anything in between. The light colored spots along the side are also something I myself have not seen in a barneck.

As to the Aru Island, I'll be honest, I know nothing about them, I simply tossed that out due to some similarities I saw in color and pattern on one that I saw pictured on the net.

As to size, she was sold to me as an 11 footer, and while I know people are often apt to exaggerate the length of big snakes, I bet she is ever bit of it, maybe even 12 feet. I have a burm that I know to be 10ft in length, and this snake is definately longer.

She was also sold to me as a "he", but due to the size, as well as the small size of the spurs, compared to the size of the spurs on the male barneck I used to have, I'm thinking its a female. I'm not about to try probing it untill I have another person or two here to assist.

Anyhow, thanks again for the thoughts.

Steve

You know, now that you mention it, she does look a bit larger than I originally estimated. I used to have a female southern scrub that was around 10' (sold to me initially as being 7 or 8', imagine my surprise! it was a pleasant one though, lol), and her thickness was pretty much the same as yours. So I'd imagine she definitely is at least 10', probably more along the lines of 11 or 12'. I have seen a couple of dark barnecks, but you're right, her pattern is slightly off. However, there is a lot of variation present within each locale of the scrub python, so there's no telling. She could also be a wild intergrade between two locales, though probably not. She's just probably from a more southerly or higher elevated locale where the darker coloration helps. You know, with those white dots on the side, maybe she's a a scrub x tiger retic hybrid...lol, kidding of course. She is beautiful whatever she is, and at least judging from the fourth picture you posted, she doesn't seem to be completely unhandleable. With my large female southern, she wasn't too bad either, as long as you didn't do anything stupid like wave your hand in front of her face. I accidentally sort of did that once while my attention was distracted, during a presentation no less, and ended up with a rather large scrub python wrapping her jaws not-so-nicely around my forearm. It caused some really nice swelling, but was otherwise okay. I made the front page of the local paper, and the picture was taken about 20 or 30 seconds before she nailed me. I'm glad the photographer was gracious enough to not to put a picture of that in there, though he did include it in the article...LOL.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Seeing that scrub and conjuring my old memories of mine makes me really regret having gotten rid of them. That female southern was probably the single most gorgeous snake I've ever kept. I just recently got out of venomous snakes and started focusing all my efforts on my pythons (retics and Bredl's) so maybe I can get back into scrubs at some point in the near future. They are amazing snakes, definitely unlike any other. The best way I can think to describe them is like a gigantic, slightly more terrestrial, green tree python with even bigger teeth! Hah, anyway, enough. Best of luck with her, and keep us posted on how things progress.
-Chance

I just wanted to reply to a few of your comments. Like you said, she will tolerate some handling, but she is not to be trusted. I had a male, which recently died for unknown reasons, that I could "almost" completely trust. Every now and then he'd get a little pissy, but most of the time he was fine.

This one tagged me, only slightly, after I bathed her. Just a quick little nip to the wrist, and she immediately released. Unfortunately she opened up an artery with that little nip, which was a situation I had never been faced with before. It was only a puncture, not a tear, and I was able to get it stopped relatively quickly, thank goodness. I really didn't want to have to go to the ER for something like that. It would have been like what you described, in this little town where I live, it almost certainly would have hit the paper...LOL

I once was doing a program at my son's daycare, with an audience of 2-4 year-olds. I was holding up an 8.5 ft blue beauty snake, and had just mentioned that I didn't completely trust that snake when it caught me from the bridge of the nose to about mid-cheek and really opened me up. Very colorful addition to the program.

Anyhow, it is I, now, who's rambling. As you can tell, I too share your enthusiasm. And while I have no plans on getting into retics, I do want to eventually get a male yellow-head to use in my programs.

I'll let you know if anything changes with this new beast of mine. I wanted to weigh her today, but I discovered that my scale isn't working, so that is something I want to do soon, as well as possibly try and measure her (yeah, right!) LOL

P.S. You mentioned that you used to keep hots. If you check out my photos in the gallery, earlier today I uploaded a couple of pics of a rather handsome (I think so at least) Suphan cobra I own. One eye is smaller than the other, but other than that it's a pretty sharp snake.

I agree with Tim, she is a dark Barneck. But with scrubs, they need a higher humidity for them to thrive. If she's not shedding complete or nearly complete, the humidity is too low.

Hi Josh,

Yeah, I'm aware of the humidity requirements, and currently she is at 75% humidity. And as to the old skin that was visible in the picture, what you saw is about all there was. And for reasons you can probably imagine, I wasn't too anxious to try and hand shed that little bit on my own.

Anyhow, while I could be wrong, I don't think that was due to the humidity being too low. She was shipped to me just a few days ago, and from being in the bag during shipping, and my transferring her to the cage, some of the old skin had pulled loose before she shed, which I believe may be why it didn't come off cleanly. She also had a nice long soak in the tub the day she arrived, as she had crapped in the bag and I wanted to get her cleaned up.

I do appreciate the info, thanks again.

Steve

Thats a dark barneck. Arus are a lot lighter and more of a golden coppery color.

Tim

Hi Tim and thanks for the reply.

If you read my reply to Chance's reply above, you will see why I wasn't so sure of it being a barneck, as well as why I mentioned Aru. However, since the Consensus seems to be barneck, that is what I am now leaning towards.

Thanks,
Steve

im no expert, ive been keeping scrubs for 2 years now and ive only handled a few dozen in that time.

but...that is a very dark barneck, the "port hole" markings on the side are fairly common among the sorong peninsula populations, 'sorong" barnecks tending be darker and more heavily patterned than "manokwari" barnecks which tend to have a pattern ranging from slightly reduced to totally absent. the size of that snake also says its not an aru. so far arus have shown to max out around 8.5 feet, and, that snake is definitely quite a bit longer than 8.5 feet. arus also tend to show a hypomelanistic type of appearance. their patterns also tend to consist of rosettes instead of bars or bands. again none of these are traits exclusive to arus, nor do all arus conform to this description...as there are arus with solid locality documentation that do not really look much like "typical" aru scrubs. and we may find out when arus are finally produced in captivity and then grown up that 8.5 is not the maximum length they reach. again these are just my observation of the aru and other scrubs ive seen, owned, or worked with over the last 2 years. but i feel confident saying your scrub is not an aru, as even those that dont resemble a "typical" aru havent been that dark nor have they had barred patterns.

J
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Jaymz
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