Reptile & Amphibian Forums

whats the deal with these kafieu island pythons?these are being imported as wild caught adults,but why is it that almost all of them i see for sale seem to be young animals,around a year or 18 months old?when you see normal colored wild caught animals come in,they usually come in as full grown adults but not these guys.i think out of all the canarys i have seen,only one of two where adults of breeding age.i have collected animals in the wild many times and it is almost always much harder for to you find babies or sub adults than it is to find full grown adults.so why are these canary adults so alusive?again,i have seen an adult on occasion,but i do question the overwhelming amount of wild caught young.am i the only one who finds this strange?or is the fact that many others are questioning these animals ,the reason for the price decline recently?again im sorry if this was already covered.

Not to start a long discussion/debate, but you strike right on something I've been wondering about. I put out a "bounty" a little while ago...looking for a true adult female Kafiau (sp?). None came to pass (I'm looking for one around 750 g and solid yellow). It seems to me that the first few mid-sized animals (around 40" and approx. 300g) were brought in and commanded huge prices. The prices seemed to drop after a while...it is, after all, a locale, and not a single mutant animal/gene.
There are plenty of animals out there for anyone to buy in the 150-300g range, lots are nice yellow, some are more dusky and look to be changing or ?
Although I have several of these animals now and am hoping that some will hold all or at least most of their yellow, I'm thinking that what we really have is a locale where the animals undergo a delayed or somehow different ontogenesis (color change to adult colors).
after all, if you could import a 300g female that was yellow and sell it for $1500, How much could you sell a 1200g, 46" yellow adult female for, especially when it could breed tomorrow? The answer is, a lot. So why don't we see any? maybe they don't exist, maybe the animals change color in the 1.5-2.5 yr range (300-500g). maybe ? who knows?
I'm really interested to hear what others have to think about this...

www.canarychondros.com

hey thanks for posting.im glad to see someone else out there is wondering the same thing.its not that theres no value in an animal that can keep its yellow coloration untill its well over a year old,but thats a far cry from an animal that stays 100 percent yellow is entire life.if you read my old posts from a couple months ago(posted under name manakawari)i made a couple posts questioning why my manakawari local animals hadnt changed color yet at 18 months.they finally did turn a nice green and blue,actually changed from 100 percent yellow to green in 4 days,no joke.basically what i am saying is,my manakawari animals looks every bit canary as the canarys being sold,the only difference is my snakes where actually larger than many of them before they changed.so again i ask,why are wild caught youngster canarys so easy to find,but with other types only full grown adults come in.what i think is,a few people jumped on the canary bandwagon after seeing what high prices people were getting for the first few true adult canarys,and started calling any animal imported ,that was yellow,regardless of age,a canary.again ,im not knocking these animals.any animal that is guaranteed to stay yellow ,if even for only 2 years,still has value over normals and fills a nitch in the market.

i just checked out your site,man these are really nice snakes.i do hope that some of them do hold.now that i see that you have first hand experience with them,what have you noticed?how large is your largest?how long have you had kept them?have you noticed any changing color yet?you are the guy to talk to.

Well, thanks for the complement, but let me say that I am definetly not THE guy to talk to. There are lots of people out there working with these animals. The man who has the most experience that I know of is a guy named Tim who has his site at www.yellowchondro.com
I have lots of experience with herps in general, but I'm relatively new to GTP's. They were always on my list of animals to put in a collection, but when I saw my first pics of the canary animals, I had to move into action.
I have not had them very long...I have seen a few shed. One 275g female got lighter (virtually no green). and one 325g male stayed the same but gained a lot of dusky darker areas on the back of his head.
I will be updating my site sometime this week (not today), but it is funny how different the animal can look in pics based on flash, lighting, etc.
In general, I think these animals show promise for high-end displays, just like the greenest and yellowest GTP's do today. That being said, the difference between the True canary yellows and the slightly more dusky animals is significant under low lighting, but adding full-spectrum lighting makes even the dusky ones look pretty nice. I am always surprised at how good the dark ones look when I take them outside for photo shoots.
My largest is 325g. How long? I don't really know, i don't like to measure snakes in terms of length. over 40" is safe to say but other than that...

Kafiau or Kafiou(both spellings for the same island)here's a map, the little red arrow points to the island as it is small.

The island is being clear cut and that is one reason we see so many showing up lately though most have gone to Europe. My guess is that a number of larger animals are kept by Farms in Indo. The way things look this local may be extinct in the wild before long. If you do a search using Kafiau or Kafiou island you'll find more info and links to sites with animals and some pretty good sized ones. I've posted pictures of mine here in the past and on other sites like MVF, CW ETC. I'm dial up so I don't like posting the same pics over and over takes way to long.

I have yellow as well as green Kafiau's my largest yellow female being well over 5 feet long, I've had her going on a year now and she hasn't grown in length but has bulked up a little. Some myself included think these are a some what smaller race(time will tell) they are a more slender animal.They also seem to be a lot calmer than most other localities.

The female in this picture is over 5 feet long, she's on a closet pole.

Here's a male that is changing he is around 4 and a half feet, he's sitting on 2 inch PVC. If you look around there are big yellow adults out there. People especially known breeders tend to keep quiet about having them. I'm sure one reason is that they want to see what these animals will produce but also some seem to get rather upset at the mention of these yellow animals so many don't talk about them much. Myself with having 8 of them and that being the largest local group I have well I wouldn't have to much else to talk about lol. Randy

-----
I don't care if the glass is half full or half empty !
I just want the full glass I paid for !

Wow randy, you didn't tell me you had a spectacular female like that! Seeing one that large "gives me hope"! lol.
she looks magnificent, I need to find out how to take better indoor pics...i think i need to adjust the white balance (Flashes always cause the animals to 'wash out'in brightness.
Anyways, thanks for the map, too...I;ve been searching and haven't been able to find one.
do you find that the animals who become duskier start first on the spine, then seem to have the color spread down? I know you have some all greens, have you watched some color changes?