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I obtained these two siblings in a trade. They are from wild caught parents but I have no info about the mother. They were traded to me as Hondurans but the more I look at them, the more I wonder. Not only does one look tangerine/peach, but they both look hypo in person. So my questions for you experienced milk snake guys are:

1. Are they Hondurans?
2. Do they look hypo to you?
3. What's with the tangerine/peach looking guy?

Thanks for the help,

John

Just by judging at your pics you posted, I would be wondering myself if I see these hatchlings at a reptile show being sold as hypos with a couple of good reasons. FIRST reason is just the physical look of these snakes. It look to me that the first one is just a tricolor hondo, and if in person the second one looks like tangerine, well there is a tangerine phase honduran that doesn't have to visually be a hypo. There is a possibility that they could be "hets" for hypo but you will not know unless you are absolutely sure what the genetics of their parents are or when you breed test them in a couple of years or so. They both have way too many black tippings as well. The SECOND reason about my skeptism of these guys being claimed as hypo is that if both of them are from parents of wild caught, the chances of two hypos in the wild actually breeding to each other, or even let's say both are hets for hypo, are really very slim compared to controlled breeding done with captive bred snakes. You have to remember that the hypo trait is a known "recessive" gene, and in the wild it is not readily manifested or shown. Besides, a hypo in the wild tends to attract more attention and that is a huge disadvatage to the animal as a rule. It's like the albino trait...it has been documented that an albino tiger born in the wild has almost zeor chance of surviving to adulthood...so it is no surprising that it also applies to other species, including the snakes.

I am attaching a pic of my tricolor hypo with no black tippings and the bands are "hazy" looking and not vivid.

This are just my opinions, and hope others will give their own opinions too.

Thanks ! And your snakes look great to me...simply because I love snakes!

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RAY

The only thing the guy I got them from assured me of is that they were hondos from wild caught parents, and they were siblings. He never mentioned hypo. I was just wondering myself because despite the obvious black tipping, the black just looks faded to me in person. There was also apparently a third sibling from the same clutch that had some "crazy, marbled, aberrant" pattern. I never saw it but that was the way it was described to me. Here's a pic a fourth tricolor sibling that had huge black bands with a lot of crossovers. Regardless, I thought there was something weird going on in this clutch and they cost me very little in trade value. Any other ideas?

You're very welcome man. Whenever I go to some reptile shows, I always stop by booths that have wild-caught specimens or hatchlings from wild caught adults and I notice that they seem to have a lot of not only predominantly black tippings but also black large markings. I once asked a zookeeper about that (I put some volunteer time at a local zoo regularly) and he said that nature would usually make them darker or more black to "blend in" (camouflage) with the environment. It is consistent with the fact that the faster way of bringing out the recessive genes in any species is controlled breeding (as what we humans do with breeding captive bred snakes). Same as dogs...you cannot find a pure bred Poodle or Golden Retriever in the wild as wild dogs and yet after centuries of dog captive breeding using wild dog genes, we are able to isolate those genes and serve our own purpose (breeding dogs the way we want them to appear).

I personally would tell people whenever I get a chance to avoid wild caught snakes for a number of reasons...one of which is to prevent the depletion of the natural population of the snakes which would have drastic consequences on our ecosysytem, two is the snake has a high probability of carrying parasites, three is you really do not know the genetic background of wild caught snakes, fourth is they tend to be nippy and aggressive even if eventually you can tame them.

While it is great that you got a good monetary deal when you got them, the captive bred "normal looking" hondurans without any het for a recessive genes are better looking for a little more money (but certainly worth it).

Anyhow, thank you for asking my opinion and if you wanna ask me more questions, please feel free to respond to this thread or email me directly.

Have a good one bud!
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RAY

np

...did you also acquire this critter? If so, do you now have three siblings that came from the same source?

Scott

because I didn't think I needed 3 males from the same clutch. Why do you ask? I could check to see if he's still available.
John

John, if you don't mind. It just seems that there were a lot of aberrancies in that clutch. Any idea what he'd want for that male?

Scott

Don't you see Polyzona here? 23 or so red bands, tangerine cheeks on that one and the (fairly) thin snout ring? Narrow white bands to boot......
Would you tell us who you got these from please??
Jeff

from a guy who obtained them from an importer... not sure on who the importer was, but I could find out. The clutch came from a wild caught, gravid female. They guy I got them from asked to see the mother but through some confusion, the importers couldn't identify the exact snake. They were said to be hondurans by both the importer and the guy I traded with. I'm not experienced at all with polyzona. How can I distinguish between polyzona and honduran?
Thanks for replying.
John

...for you to count the number of red body rings each snake has from just behind the head to above the vent?

I'm going to need to study these a little more.

Scott

The peachy/tangerine looking guy has his vent on the 22nd red ring from the back of his neck. The other tri-color guy has his 23rd ring just above the vent. Hope this helps.

Yeah,I saw them.I didn't post cause I wasn't sure yet?They still look like some hondos I have hatched but do have that poly look to them?
I do think that the snout ring is a little wide but the mottling on it suggests poly?

shannon

Actually, the snout ring is (almost)thin like Polyz, a Hondo should have a wider/fat/different snout ring. That said, just because this one characteristic looks un-Hondo, the sibs may have been smack-on Hondos. Red bands look in low 20's, very Hondo, everything looks Hondo but the snout ring.....
Then, if they truly are F1s of imports, odds are they're Hondos.
Yani45: If you check out Shannons "mystery snake" post of
Dec 15, there's a smack-on Polyz. The red on your snake will likely remain cleaner than our Polyzs also-another Hondo trait. Send us pics of the adults in 2-3 years......
Jeff

These could be aberrant Hondurans. John said the orangish one has 22 RBR, and the tricolor has 23 RBR. But looking at both of them, the snout band should be broader for Honduran, and the light temporal band looks more to me like polyzona than hondurensis. Just glancing at both initially, they seem to resemble polyzona more than hondurensis, but locality info would answer that question (if it exists). I'm still scratching my head on these. That orangish one especially is awfully dark. The RBR counts are both in the realm for either subspecies. And that tricolor looks a LOT like Shannon's new polyzonas as far as WBR tipping and head pattern. I just don't know for sure.

Scott

The red is very clean. Too clean for a typical Polyz. There are some clean Polyzs out there (not in my snake room tho) I'm sure, and I'm leaning (just leaning) to Hondurensis. We'd have more to work with if there were adults and/or the rest of the clutch to look at.
I vote predominantly Hondo. There! Jeff

That's true. Polyzona are usually very black-tipped. I'll send you some jpegs of the adult polyzona I once had with locality data. Pretty clean red bands. You're correct, though. We don't really have enough info on them. Locality data would solve the whole puzzle!!

Scott

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