Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Today my neonate green anaconda arrived. ~400g little guy. He is supposed to be a male, but I wanted to double check myself. After doing a bit of searching on sexing greens, I found a lot of conflicting information. Some sites said spur sexing was very accurate, while other sites said this was useless till about 6ft . Some sites mentioned probing, but nothing about expected depth, while I came across other information that said that probing greens was difficult and that they dont probe like other snakes. Could someone give me some first hand solid information based on experience for sexing a green this small? Much appreciation.
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Cheers,
Anthony

Anthony,
Very young greens can be accurately sexed by the spurs if you have seen a lot of them and know what to look for. As in boa constrictors, it is not the presence, absence or size of the spurs that is important in very young greens, but the structure or shape of the spur that distinguishes the difference between male and female. Any green over 5 or 6 feet is fairly easy to spur sex because the structure of the spurs have developed and diverged between the two sexes and are easier to distinguish. However, with greens smaller than this, it will take quite a bit of practice, especially with neonates as the differences between the sexes at this age are extremely slight. I use a binocular microscope on 10 power to sex newborn anacondas and boa constrictors, but other magnifiers will work just as well.

Probing is difficult with young greens as well, and does take some practice. However this would probably be easier than spur sexing as you don’t have a large sample size of young greens to use for comparison purposes. Greens have a different structure within the cloaca than other boids and require a different probing procedure. The probe first needs to be inserted into one side of the cloaca opening perpendicular to the body, and in about one-thirds or a little more of the way through the body. Holding it steady, and without allowing it to move back out any, rotate it parallel to the body and move it back into the tail as you would probe any other boid. All of this needs to be done very slowly and easily to avoid injury. I don’t know, but if you are not familiar with probing boids, I would find someone who is that could do this for you. If you do have a fair amount of experience, it shouldn’t be a problem for you at all. It may take a few tries, but if you take it slowly, there won’t be any problems. Females will only probe two or three subcaudal’s, males considerably more. Good luck, and let me know how it goes.

Kelly

Thanks, Kelly. I had tried probing earlier today and was suspecting it was indeed a female, as I it seemed to stop after 2-3 subcaudals. Tried again when I got home from work and after gently moving the probe around it suddenly hit "the pocket" and slid in with ease about and inch and a half. Definitely different and a bit more difficult than probing other snakes I've dealt with! Thanks again.
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Cheers,
Anthony

Glad to hear everything turned out. I'm sure many male neonate greens have been sold as females over the years.

Kelly