Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i love my chucks color, but i was curious... will it intensify when he gets warmer or during mating season? or when he finishes shedding? i like how his back is orange with small white specks suffused in, it looks like megapixels enhanced .
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0.0.37-blue lab chichlids
0.1.6-sandiego gopher snakes
0.0.1-cal. kingsnake
0.0.1-anole
0.0.2-f.b.t
2.3-coturnix quail
0.1-cockatiel
0.2-s. black widow
1.1(fixed) cats-eddie/buzz

He looks pretty fired up (nice bright colors) in your pics. He may still have a little bit of growing to do, if he does he may get more color as he grows. Usually the color gets a bit duller right before a shed and is at its peak right after a shed. Chucks are duller when they're cool too. Gracie wakes up every morning looking like your little girl in the pics, all gray, but after sitting under the basking light for a bit, she gets all light and pretty. Good diet, mood, and lighting can also make dramatic differences in color intensity.
-Alice

He will fade with age until you hardly see the washed out orange in his back. They always have their best color in the wild. It will probably never look as good as it does now(unless you keep him outside). The chucks from that area are not really known for their color. I think the one you caught is a particularly nice one. They are known as the speckled pattern class. The solid redbacks are the nicest in my opinion from south central AZ. Tom

Cal Poly had a chuck that I used to take care of when I was a student there. I heard that he's really colored up since they got him a new MV bulb and he's over 12. He's one of the cream / yellow backed guys from Mojave. Back when I was taking care of him, he would be pretty dull most of the time, but if you got him excited or took him out to get some sun, he'd go black and pale yellow / high contrast.

Do old reds fade in the wild too, or is it tied to the indoor life?

-Alice

Thge reds do fade in captivity I think it is probably a combination of things that cause it. Diet, lack of natural light, humidity, etc. What we see with wild animals is that the reds do not fade but the black has a tendency to keep creeping into the red area and take it over. A lot of the olders animals in a locality that has been checked out for years only have a red stripe down the back maybe an inch or 2 wide then it fades into black and the belly is solid black. I think that in captivity we tend to keep chucks too dry. Of course in the wild these guys crawl into deep crevices and under boulders in which through evaporation of the moisture from the soil would collect uder these rocks. Think about the the method of collecting water if you are stranded in the desert. You can take and dig a hole in completely dry dry soil. Place a large piece of plastic(like a drop cloth) over it sealing the edges(so moisture cannot escape)with soil or rocks. Put a cup in the center bottom of the hole and place a small rock in the center of the plastic so it over the cup. Through evaporation over night the moisture will condense on the bottom of the plastic and drip into the cup. This probably happens in these crevices and under boulders to a certain extent. If you notice you never see a dull chuck in the wild. They all look like they took a warm bath and and got a rub down with oil. All cleaned off and shiney. They seem to just glimmer with color. To me there is nothng more beautiful that a redback chuck sitting up on a boulder in the desert sun(Except maybe my wife. Got to say that in case she reads this forum hehe.). Tom