Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Can anyone help me to differ those?
It's rather easier (or maybe easy) to differ them when they're adults..
but it's not that clearly different when they are still babies, i guess..

one guide says that babies of southern WLP are bigger than the northern ones. Let's say if we can't compare these two, can we tell if this one is southern?

I just need a comparison of whatever differ the southern from the northern from babies physical appearances..
Could anyone help me with perhaps pictures of babies of both species to show the difference?
Thanks

I've never had experience with these but usually its the pattern of the snake. I know here in Georgia, we have the Northern and Southern Ringneck snakes and the Northerns always have black spots on their bellies and the Southerns have plain bellies.

Generally if you see them for sale, they are northerns.

Jason

LOL very funny ;p
so how do u get the southern one if someone doesn't sell it to you?
i come from the country which these snakes originate, their natural habitat is in my country..
but even so, most of these snakes (both northern & southern) are wild caughts, even the babies are also WC, the best you can expect is CH (Captive Hatched)

Nevertheless, how do you differ the southern from the nothern in baby forms?
From the physical look I mean..
Many times i hear southern babies' scale look gold (I don't know if this information is true)

I only have Northerns (gold) personally so I have very little to offer other than the northerns look like southerns(black) as babies and then go golden as they grow. There is a website you could look at http://leiopython.de/en/first_description.html as an informational site though I have no idea how accurate anything is on there because I have no first hand experience in the field with these guys.

Jason

I decided to actually read some of the stuff from my own link and it looks like a great site, I have had it saved for a couple years and never actually gone there and read it. haha Anyway it seems to be a scalation difference in the head scales though the author notes that some of the black phase animals in the pet trade without locality data did not meet this scalation pattern like the animals studied in PNG.

Jason

Stone Cold,

Never had the Southerns (black) but have kept the Northerns (gold)! I've had friends however that have kept the blacks! From what I know, the blacks get bigger and are a little bit more irritable than the golds! From what I remember, my golds, were somewhat gold as hatchlings as the black hatchlings were almost axanthic forms of mine! I do know, that both forms need to be 5-6 years old before reach sexual maturity! Hope this helps!

*lol* Jason,

yeah, you're right! There are some differences in scalation, especially head scalation. The southern WLPs also attain larger size (up to 2.7m) compared to the northern ones (up to 2.1m). Neonates of the southern are also larger, same in eggs. Furthermore, the southern ones are less "nervous" than the golden ones, but at the end of the day, the southern ones are hard to get hands on!

They seem to be difficult to breed, nevertheless, some people do have had success.

Cheers,
Wulf
Link

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_____________http://leiopython.de______________

I've observed that Golden (Northern) animals will also have a post-occular white spot (or two), while Southern (Black) animals will not.

I've often wondered if there weren't intergrades between the two phases, given the wide array of differences in colour and the varying visibility of the post occular spot in individual "Gold" animals (from very obvious, to hardly noticeable).
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~Danielle