Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Greetings to all of you fellow herp keepers and anaconda admirers. I have finally received my baby green anaconda just 15 minutes ago. I took it out of the bag and hooked it with my snake hook. As soon as i tossed it into a 3 foot water container it began lashing out and striking like crazy Wow, that beats the hell out of my ball python..HAHAHAHA. However I will not even dare to handle it for the next week if not more. Let it relax and accomodate to its new biome. Do you guys know how to tell wether this specimen was captive bred or wild caught? The owner stated that its a captive bred, but who knows. observing it swim from the distance is breath taking. I bet one day it will kick my ass.

PS: what would be my best approach in handling this aggressive constrictor besides wearing gloves? as neonates these snakes are at their most volnurable and aggressive state.

The only way to be 100% certain that it is true captive born is to ask for photos of both parents, and especially the female with the newborn young. Photos of the pair breeding would be nice and will rule out the possibility of a wild caught gravid female. You can see several photos like this weekly on the Boa Forum and boa constrictors are very commonly bred in captivity. It is hard to believe that anyone breeding green anacondas in captivity would not have some type of photo documentation considering how rare of an occurrence it really is. Of the few successful captive breedings I know of, the breeders all had photos like those I listed above. Just my opinion.

Kelly

No doubt..... a photographic history of the adumts breeding and of the neonates birth would be the minimum required to ascertain if they were captive bred. Generally people are eager to show the WORLD what they have been lucky enough to produce.

Consider this: People take MULTIPLE photos of their hognose, cal kings, ratsnakes and cornsnakes breeding...how much MORE effort would one take if breeding a snake that is either A)Rare and endangered, b) Hard to breed C)Uncommonly kept or bred in captivity. Answer: A LOT.

Do the homework. Buy from reptuable breeders no matter what you buy, or buy from brokers knowing that it is probably wild caught, or farmed and has a potentially heavy parasite load

No offense, just my two cents,

Fred Albury

Congradulations. I hope you have many years together.

In addition to gloves I would wear a long-sleeve jacket. I sustained several bites on my Rt lower arm.

Scott

Yep, Kelly is right, anyone that is suggesting C/b Anacondas would most likely have pictures of both parents. Also, let me just say that if it already has worms too, then it's most likely not going to be a C/b, so check for some parasites. As far as taming it down, be prepared for A LOT of biting and bleeding. Gloves aren't always the best approach as the teeth of the snake could get caught and it could jerk back and rip them out. When you buy a little conda that isn't handable, I'm sure you already know it's not going to tame down first handling, and you will get bitten, a lot, lol. Hopefully overtime it will calm down, even if it is wild caught, it could still turn out to be fine, excluding the parasites, infections, and feeding problems. My Anerythristic conda is feeding very aggressivly on f/t now and is still fine to handle, and it's an import. Hope this helps some
~Ben