Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My newest obsesion is my group of baby anthill pythons. They are sooo cool. The babies only weigh about 4 grams or less. They have white bellies and are so small that you can clearly see internal organs, and even major blood vessels. If you hold them up to a light (I felt like I was candling an egg) You can make out the exact shape of the intestines, liver, etc.

So here is the question. Is it possible to SEE the hemipenes in males. I can make out something down there but I don't really know what I'm looking for. What would an inverted hemipene look like?

I don't know if there are too many kings that are small enough for this to work with but I figured that you guys would definetely have more experiance with tiny snakes then the python forum.

It would be really cool if it worked because I dont want to probe them. The whole tail is only 1/4 in long!

This girl is 6 months old in the pic and had already quadrupled in size since hatching!

I have bred them several times. The babies sure do like big prey items.

Last year I lost the male, all I have now is this girl. Cheers

She is beautiful! I am just getting into these guys, I only have three babies from this year so I don't have too much experience with them. It's pretty amazing how little decent literature is available on these guys. I can only find scatterd tidbits, and one paper written by Hosier. I am trying to get my hands on a copy of the Barker's book but not having too much luck..

A few questions if you don't mind...

How big is your female? How big are the babies she has had? mine were TINY! Also how many eggs does she usually lay?

cheers

-zach

what do those eat as new borns it just doesnt seem they could eat pinkies!!! i want one
are the hard to keep or breed?
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0.1.0 normal corn het hypo,anery
1.0.0 snow corn het hypo,anery,amel
1.0.0 amel corn unknown hets(4.5ft long)
1.0 sinacorn
0.0.2 snapping turtles
0.0.1 3 lined mud turtle
1.1 kenyan sand boas

They are amazingly stretchy and can take surprisingly large meals with no problem. I start most babies on pinky heads but they usually take whole pinks very quickly. Aside from getting neonates to feed consistently, they are a pice of cake. Very similar to a tiny childrens python.

hey congrats on your newby-hey what is the taxonomic name for those-is that the spotted python,or just closely related?

n/p

Back in the day when I used to breed gold eyelash vipers, I'd sex the tiny babies by illumination. I would accomplish this by hooking them while in a darkened room and have a friend shine a bright light behind them as they were being manipulated on the hook. If the light shined on the lower dorsal area of the light colored snake, the red hemipenes would be clearly outlined in the base of the tail in males. I didn't want to attempt probing or popping because of the belief (at the time) that doing so would permanantly damage the tail when such procedures were done to tiny arboreal snakes.

Will