Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Clutch of baby easterns just hatched. Pictured here is a baby still nestled in the incubation box. No kinks, aberrant/split scales, or obvious deformities. Went ~118 days at 75-79 degrees (extreme low 72/extreme high 85-both were caught within a day and corrected). Sire was a F2 WC/Allesandrini. Dam was a three year old from EBV line (Huffaker, Seib, Binnig, etc...). Makes me think that there is still hope left for the eastern indigos in captivity.

Beautiful. I assume WC means wild caught. To what does EBV refer?

yes.. f2 wc meant second generation from wild caught origins. they were the grandparents on the sire's side decades ago. ebv stands for east bay vivarium out in northern cal. ron huffaker use to be partners there b4 he branched out to rancho tortuga. it's to my understanding that seib/binnig and alot of lines originated from those founder animals decades ago. it's almost impossible to trace back animals to their wc origins in the 70's early 80's. many of the original breeders (allesandrini, ebv, etc..) no longer breed easterns any more. i really think the buyer's should know what the lineage of the animals were instead of just saying they were bred by so and so as there were only a few original sources to today's captive population. the interstate commerce permit requirement is also an inhbitory factor for movement of unrelated stock between states. and of course, there hasn't been any "legal" influx of unrelated genes in the past 3 decades. thank goodness i heard that a couple of people in this country are doing mitochondrial dna testing to assess relatedness of the animals.

Federal protection originally was a really good idea, but it has inadvertently encouraged inbreeding. Is it even possible to find indigo breeders who can trace the origins of their animals to "pre-protection" wild caught indigos?

I am starting to formulate a likely scenario of how the dwarfism, kink tails, split ventrals began. It makes sense that an animal with such a large home range would be vulnerable to in-breeding. It just took a few generations.

Federal protection originally was a really good idea, but it has inadvertently encouraged inbreeding. Is it even possible to find indigo breeders who can trace the origins of their animals to "pre-protection" wild caught indigos?

I am starting to formulate a likely scenario of how the dwarfism, kink tails, split ventrals began. It makes sense that an animal with such a large home range would be vulnerable to in-breeding. It just took a few generations.

well... my take is that the interstate commerce permit was never really made for snakes. there are plenty of loop holes in it (gifts, moving out of state, etc...) which it does not address. the number one problem with indigo depletion is development which results in loss of habitat/habitat fragmentation. the developers hire a bunch of lawyers and ties up fws in the courts. in the end, it's easier to go after the individual hobbyists. if they wanted to protect indigos then the eastern indigo will have to be listed as endangered requiring a cites 1 permit. it costs a pretty penny for fws to do field studies to come up with cites 1 designation.

as far as the private hobbyist goes, it didn't help any when certain unscrupulous breeders deliberately inbred/line bred indigos for certain traits (ie. redder throats) back in the days. i heard the recent mitochondrial studies on the captive indigo population shows a pretty tight cluster of related animals and very few outliers which is very bad news.

Species with small home ranges and relatively dense populations, like ball pythons, tolerate in-breeding very well, I guess that must be how breeders produce so many color morphs. Indigos are at the opposite end of the spectrum. They have really large home ranges and sparse populations, but do not tolerate in-breeding very well. Thus, captive breeding of a limited gene pool is producing problems of kink tails, dwarfism, split ventrals.
I would think that selling kink tailed individuals, even though honestly advertised as such, would be a poor business practice. You are telling the world that the potential for this particular problem runs in your collection of breeders.

tbrophy, you suggest that kink tails are genetic, they are the result of inbreeding? Why do you think that, and what do you think of the theory that incubation issues are a cause of kinks? I do know of pairs producing some kink tails, and when the same pair bred again but the breeder changed the egg incubation regime, the kink tails were eliminated, suggesting it is not genetic. I think there may be variable causes, and someone pointed out to me kink tails are common in Gonysoma " redtail/green rat snakes", but are less common if the eggs are derived from gravid imports. He was suggesting that something may be missing or present in captive husbandry that is causing it. This is something we really need to solve, as kink tails are a problem, worse than a nonhatching egg in my mind. Most breeders I know have produced a few... BTW, do you cribo breeders produce kink tails now and then, or is just a D. couperi phenomenon? Comments? Thanks, Vic

well, my take is that tail kinks are more commonly seen in easterns as this is the northern most species of drymarchon and the eggs are the least tolerant to higher incubation temps.

BUT... if u look at the eastern below with the prolapse issue, it's a not just a tail kink there. it's obvious the animal has major inbreeding issues. the ventral scalation is totally asymmetrical with aberrant looking split scales. to sell that animal as just an eastern with a slight tail kink is just plain wrong. i was asked once if split scales/ruffled looking scales are harmful to the snake. obviously, the answer is no but it's an indication of inbreeding and things u can't see such as internal anatomical deformities will eventually catch up to the animal as it ages.

Any evidence that tail kinking is genetic is admittedly circumstantial. However, recently there were three different KS adds describing indigos with tail kinks. These adds we're from different breeders, not the same guy. My assumption is that the kinks crop up periodically, maybe just one neonate in a clutch. Well, if the cause of kinking was environmental (e.g. high incubation temps), would not entire clutches exhibit kinking? It appears that it effects the occasional snake within a clutch, not all of them. I do not think we should dismiss the possibility that inbreeding within a species which has a limited gene pool is causing problems. Unfortunately, the relatively high price indigos demand encourages inbreeding.

and oddly enuff there's been several ads on people trying to sell previously egg bound females as pets. the irony is that they all came from one source. just like tail kinks i'm not too sure if females that are prone to being egg bound is a genetic issue. my gut feeling is that it's seen more in inbred snakes but the environment (especially a pure rodent diet) has alot to do with this.

enuff messing with u dry people. ugly baby anery brazilian rainbows are popping out right now gonna go mess with the epicrates group now

very slight differences in incubation temps might cause abnormal growth in the embryo.....that particular egg may have been just slightly cooler/warmer in the same box.....TSD species hatch out both genders from the same nest......reflective of temp gradient in nest???

Hard to say if the whole clutch would or not exhibit kinking, some individuals might be predisposed to kinking, some might evade it by having a temperature average just slightly different, etc. So many variables, and nobody has the numbers to really make a clear and reasonable conclusion. It also may be genetic AND temps during incubation. I learned this year many thermometers are not real accurate, and that if D. couperi are kept too long, too low, they will not hatch, development was seemingly arrested at some point. Others in the same tub did hatch some, some after 135 days. There is a lot to be learned about incubation I think, and yet I know a guy who did everything theroretically right and he had some issues. When it goes well, it seems so simple, jut let nature take its course... Other times when confronted with a dilemma or even worse, you know not why, it goes sour and you are sad and blue...these challenges are the reason in part we don't get bored with this taxa? Good luck to all, and work on genetic diversity, it can only help. Vic

In my 37 years of herp keeping i have seen spinal kinks in several species including corn snakes, kings & pine snakes as well as pythons. I bred Burmese pythons for several years & after a few disasters i cracked it.
I found that temp fluctuations resulted in aberrant patterns as well as spinal deformities, odd sized eyes & undersized hatchlings. Temps that are too low or too high can result in dead in egg embryos &/or deformities.
In breeding often results in premature death of apparently healthy animals & Indigos may also fall into this category. I am hoping to breed Easterns for the first time this winter Hopefully i will succeed.
On another note,
The interstate permit in my opinion is a waste of time & money, it does not benefit the breeder, the buyer or the captive Indigo population, its just a way for the USFWS to make money. Collecting Indigos at my local airport none of the staff were interested in the permit nor had any idea what kind of snakes they were, so what is the point of the permit?
Alan B is a great source of information & advice & probably has the most genetically diverse collection of Drymarchon.
We need the USFWS to allow some WC animals into the hobby to add some genetic diversity to our beloved animals.

Correction there on ur assessment of USFWS Interstate Commerce permit. They aren't even making any money from it. It costs them $80 to process the permit. So they make a lousy $20 from it. I have friends who work in environmental law. They tell me USFWS spend 80 % of their resources fighting developers/other issues in court. Leaves very little to actually do what their suppose to do. The will NEVER allow a wild indigo to be legally placed in private hands. Even zoological/conservation societies usually have to go through many legal hoops to study wild indigos. Basically, leaves illegal poaching as the only option for private breeders to obtain wild genes. Sad...

Yes, Alan B. recognized the inbreeding issue on Drymarchon very early and has tried to reverse the trend with the Central American/South American Dry's. Unfortunately, due to the legality surrounding Easterns, he opted to work with them on a limited basis but is now assisting other Eastern breeders in reversing this trend. As for other indigo breeders out there. DON'T BELIEVE ANYONE WHEN THEY TELL YOU THEIR STOCK IS BETTER THAN OTHERS!@@!#! Most of the stock out there in this country are at least partially related. Some were even purposely inbred for generations to intensify colors (ie. red throats). Before you obtain an Indigo I would certainly ask them for lineages. If they can't provide 2-3 generations of lineage, I'd seriously reconsider obtaining stock from them. Also follow the physical cues above (ventral scalation etc...). After researching the lineages of Easterns for the past two years, I can count LESS THAN 10 legal founding lines in the past two decades.

The logic behind the Interstate Commerce permit evades me. I just consider it the cost of doing business, if you want to buy an indigo, but I do not see how it helps the species. Maybe there was sound reasoning behind the permit requirement 20 years ago, but now, not so much.
Glad to see some attention being paid to the captive eastern indigo gene pool because I am not very optimistic that this species will escape extinction. You have a top of the line predator with an expansive home range within one of the most populous states in the country.
I just received my permit from FWS and look forward to acquiring three females later this summer or early in the fall.

you're absolutely right on the indigos in the wild. they need alot of room and it's being fragmented by development. the developers will tie fws in the courts indefinitely to prevent them from halting development.

as for the interstate commerce permit, i don't think there was any rhyme nor reason for it. fws wanted to regulate indigos but indigos ARE NOT LISTED AS ENDANGERED nationally so they couldn't apply the CITES 1 permit to it. so instead they used the interstate commerce permit which was never intended for this type of usage. kind of like what they did to the burmese python and attaching it to the lacey act which made no sense. when i start producing more indigos, i will discount out of state purchases by $100 to help the flow of genes around the country.

I have always been curious as to how many people reading this forum have ever seen an indigo in the wild. I know I have not. Saw a roadkill indigo in Florida back in the late 70's, but never a living one.

My clutch of perfect little hatchling easterns gave me hope for the species also.
It might be informative if Professor Matt Rand still follows this forum for him to chime in. Just a few years back he requested samples of recently shed skins to look at the DNA of captive couperi. He wanted samples from anyone willing to send them to him. He could inform us of how many distinct lines he found. As well as who has the least represented blood lines.