Reptile & Amphibian Forums

These photos are from several years ago when I kept and bred Taiwan Beauty snakes(taeniura friesei).
They are one of the most interesting species I have worked with. Their colors, bold markings, temperment, AGGRESSIVE feeding response and adult size make them a very impressive and interesting subspecies of taeniura to work with. The adults I had raised up were super calm unlike most other asians (especially taeniura although there are some others out there)but were true brutes when feeding time came around.

I was looking at a general snake book I got from the library about 20 years ago. There was a picture of a baby friesei in the book that caught my eye immediatly. The bold jet black markings in contrast with it's light yellow and white background colors really caught my eye. It was truely the picture that started my interest in asian ratsnakes. Might sound a little silly but that's the truth.
A adult male blue beauty I had was proably a foot and a half longer than my adult male taiwan beauty but the taiwan was about twice the girth of the adult male blue.
I have been looking for a really nice pair of true taiwan hatchlings for a while now as I regret getting rid of mine ever since I did. Suprisingly it's not easy to find a breeder working with them these days that you can count on them being true freisei. You see them listed on line and at shows frequently but often look like their mixed with other subspecies or aren't freisei at all.
Notice the two tone tongue on the hatchling in the top photo.

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Randy Whittington

Those specimens are beautiful. I've noticed the same thing in the classifieds. It seems like it's getting harder to find pure animals of a lot of species now. It's a shame. I'm glad the whole locallity movement occured, I just hope it's not to late. I know there are purists out there, you just have to be very knowledgeable to be able to find them. Luckily there are quite a few here on the rat snake forum.
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Matt Kauffman

Thanks Matt. I hate to see it to. I have kept plenty of generic lines but have never intentionally crossed any species or subspecies and never will. I don't have too many local specific animals in my collection but I'm trying to slowly increase the amount of local specific snakes I have.
That's one problem about asian ratsnakes. You can be fairly certain your getting snakes that are the exact species you think your getting but it's almost impossible to get anything that's anymore specific than from a paticular country or province at best.
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Randy Whittington

Okay - my second attempt to reply to this post - this site is not friendly to the the slow thinker / typist. LOL

I had typed up a long post about beauties, etc. (which disappeared when I tried to post it - logged me out) - but I'll just shorten it to saying those are some nice pics of nice beauties, Randy!
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-Toby Brock
Southwestern Center for Herpetological Research

Thanks Toby. There was a guy, who's name I can't remember, that used to do the Mid Atlantic Reptile Show in Baltimore, MA who had the best pure beauty snakes I've ever seen. Unfortunatly the guy just seemed to drop off the face of the earth in the early 00's. I wish I could remember his name but know one seemed to know for sure what happened to him or what happened to his collection.
He would have a table full with rows of different species of taeniura. He had cameroon highland cavers, chinese, mocquard's, taiwan's, yunnans, blues and another rarer subspecies which I can't remember now. His yunnans had the color of the mocquards I keep but with their larger size they looked amazing. If you like taeniura, this guys selection would blow you away.
I regret to this day not buying a couple pairs of his cameroon highland cavers.
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Randy Whittington

Just to clear up something I said. His yunnans were yearlings the year I noticed them being so nice and was the reason for their size. I didn't mean because of their adult size being larger.
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Randy Whittington

All great stuff, Randy - wish I could've been there for that! I am a big fan of taeniurus subs - but almost completely got out of them last year - kept my big old calico / het calico pair, and very glad I did. They are great snakes - lots of personality in their own way - and interesting and beautiful. I seriously considered only keeping morphs of Chinese beauties at one time - but I was too interested in other stuff too to go through with it. I gave up most of my beauty snake herd due to their big size (in comparison to my other stuff) and the big cages I prefer to keep them in would take up room which is currently being taken by racks. LOL

Speaking of rarer subs - I remember something about a "Dwarf Yellow Beauty" posted at the Ratsnake Foundation a couple years back...

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-Toby Brock
Southwestern Center for Herpetological Research