Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Starting to build my collection back up now that I'm finally settled into an area and have a dedicated snake room. A friend of mine took some pictures and sent them to me this AM.

Here is a hatchling Seleyar G. janseni. This picture does not do justice to their beautiful emerald green color.

This is another Seleyar specimen that is about one year old. You can see it's starting to change color.

The next two pictures are of males that died despite doing well for over a year in my collection. Both are Java specimens.

And here are two aberrant specimens from Java. First is a female, second is a male. May try to breed them this summer.

And a body shot of the same male just above:

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Current snakes:

1.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

2.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

4.3 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

Some wild snakes there! Thanks for the pics, I love those gonys! Just can't get enough of them. Good luck with breeding.

Really nice snakes Chris. I've always liked all of the Asian Rats and if I had to specialize in just one type of snake it would be things like Orthriophis, Gonyosoma, etc. Of course I already have my hands way too full.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

Matt,

If I ever give up on Gonyosoma I think I'd keep O. t. ridleyi and Rhyncophis boulengeri. Both seem much easier to keep and breed than Gonyosoma and are just (okay, almost) as interesting.
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Current snakes:

1.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

2.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

4.3 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

Gorgeous snakes all of them.

That orange abberant female is wild!

By what size and age do you find the black colouring completes itself?
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~Katt

>>By what size and age do you find the black colouring completes itself?

Katt,

I have not yet raised a baby into adult hood. My one adult black janseni was raised by a friend.

I can only tell you it's somewhere between 1 and 2 years, probably more like 1.5 years.

One interesting thing about their color change is that age appears to be more important than size. I have several full siblings from different clutches. What we have found is that the color change starts at about 9 months of age, regardless of how big the snake it. We had one clutch that my friend power fed to such a degree that they surpassed (in size) the clutch that was about 3 months older. But the smaller/older clutch still started to change color first.

This is based on a limited sample size but interesting nonetheless.