Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is anyone good at this or does anyone think it can be a somewhat accurate means of sexing?

but found the results to be inconsistent due to the heavy musculature of the tail. To be 100% accurate with greens I believe you would need to go with probing or spur morphology, or a combination of both would be the best.

Kelly

After the necropsy of jasons anaconda which did have small spurs which looked to be hooked yet not really on an appendage we found ovaries. I am aware some females have curved spurs but there were only 2 snakes to compare so while I have gotten pretty good at picking out the males and females in a group, these snakes looked the same so it was hard. Recently I looked at a singe anaconda and it had very tiny spurs but did appear to be on a small appendage and slightly looked (no more than jasons and perhaps smaller) but I also felt a hemipene when sliding my finger down the tail. I was just thinking if this combination would be a good method in the future.

The problems with spur sexing greens come when you are working with really young snakes. As you noted, neonate females tend to have partially external spurs that can easily be mistaken for male spurs unless you get a very close look at them under some type of magnification. Females spurs are curved, but not hooked at 90 degrees or on an appendage like the males, but the difference is difficult to see on greens under 3 feet with the unaided eye. Additionally, on neonates, the morphology of the spur itself with males and females is fairly similar and can be difficult to differentiate without some practice. As they grow and mature, the structural differences of the spurs become more distinct with age, but usually by 4 or 5 feet are fairly obvious once you have seen a few. As the female grows into the 8 to 10 feet range, the spur becomes completely recessed and is typically no longer visible, while the male spur becomes more external with age. It would be interesting to see your results on greens that were all probed, spur sexed, and also checked for hemipenes. As I mentioned before, I tried checking for hemipenes with the 2001 litter inconclusively. I don’t have any really young greens currently, so let me know if you ever do this in the near future as I would be very interested in your results. Thanks,

Kelly

Kelly, I attend a lot of reptile shows and have been looking at the spurs of every green anaconda I see. Only recently have I started feeling for hemipenes and it seemd to go well, this is why i asked. While I cannot see each with age i can look for spurs and feel for hemipenes on about every snake at shows (most people are interested to learn what I known and find out the sex of the babies..thanks mostly to you). I can also probe a bunch of them because I have a very nice tiny ball point that is about perfect for a young green, I just doubt as many people will allow the probing unless I am serious about a purchase..which I am not because I do not trust the majority of greens i see.

Thanks for the info.

Kelly