What a pleasant surprise. Let me tell you the story. About a year ago I purchased an amazon basin ETB as a male snake. I just assumed he was since female basins are usually quite a bit more expensive..... I cooled my emeralds through mid oct to dec and then paired the basin with my big northern girl...for 3 days .....nothing happened....they sat on opposite ends of the enclosure....the next weekend I put the female with my male northern.......he wanted her but she didnt want him. She would actually go to another perch as soon as he tried to curl up with her.....so I was a little sad but kept thinking optimistically that I had lots of time left in the breeding season.....after all it just started.
I read in my emerald book that you can put two males with a female if you watch them closely, so I thought I would try that. I sat in the reptile room in the dark for about a couple hours with my little laptop keeping an eagle eye on the enclosure... and there was no hositility. So I went upstairs....and peeked in every 20 minutes with a tiny black light on my keychain..... and then I nearly fainted.
MATING! Yeahoooo......keep in mind it was very dark and i had this tiny black light about the size of half a pen peeking in on them. I first thought it was the male northern with the female nothern because I saw the male northern with him being more slender than the other two.......and I quickly scanned the cage for the basin only to find the big northern female perched and that my "male" basin" had just turned out to be female.
The thought had crossed my mind that the basin may be female since it was fairly large even for a male basin but I kept telling myself no one would have sold me a female basin for a male basin price. I had thought about getting the basin probed but it was so friendly and sweet I didnt want to do anything to cause it to become ill mannered. I can literally kiss the snake on the nose its so gentle.
But now it is confirmed my basin is female and is mating right now as I type this. I snapped a few quick pics in the dark.
Sorry about the spots on the plexiglass, every little stratch and waterspot shows up with a flash in the dark.
