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Hello everyone, I wanted to post a picture of my indigo with imperfect scalation and ask you folks what you think but also as an educational picture to others on what to look for.

A little background:
When I purchased "Rango" I must admit I was unaware at the time of the issues of inbreeding with these beautiful reptiles and only researched their husbandry needs. He has shown me how graceful and powerful they are and do want a pair in the future but ofcourse with limited inbreeding and preferably unrelated (I know very slim) which I am currently working on and will keep Rango for education.

Thank you for posting and you are applauded for your honesty.

I wanted to post a picture of what the split scales look like for others to know what to avoid. I couldn't find many pictures online which showed the inbred scales so I figured what the hay. Rango is still a beautiful and active snake and will still be great for educational purposes. Now I just need to hunt for a pair that has limited/no inbreeding since my love for these reptiles have grown immensely and do see myself getting more involved in time.

Has anyone seen scales this bad before?

I have found that the indigos with the HIGH red color seem to have the most split scales....but that's just my limited experience and may not be a true reflection of all of them...... Just sayin

WOW! i have purchased couperi from 7 different breeders since 2002 and have produced several handfuls of my own and i have never seen split scutes run that far up the belly. i'm floored. i have seen 4-5 anterior to the vent, and a few unsplit scutes posterior to the vent, but nothing like that. amazing.

i realize that many people are crediting these scutellation anomalies to inbreeding, but let me just throw out there that this hasn't been rigorously tested. there are other possible factors, and a big one (also untested) is diet -- especially diet of the mother. my guess is that those of us conscientious enough to try and get "unrelated" pairs are also paying close attention to diet, offering a varied diet and supplementing with calcium, other minerals, and vitamins. if this is the case, then those who believe we are producing indigos from varied stock are also providing a good diet. so how do we know for sure that these anomalous scales are the product of inbreeding?

we need to consider all the evidence and all the possibilities.

if the pictured indigo is the result of severe inbreeding, then finding a mate that is distantly related should produce more normal offspring. that would shed some light on this issue.

matt

Excellent post Matt. One thing I have learned is that there are always more variables than we think and it is always good to be remindful of them. The diet of the mother which you mentioned is interesting and perhaps even temp ranges and length. I have breed crested geckos before and know it is better to have a longer incubation rate since this tends to provide larger crowns on the sides of the head.

For those who had indigos with stunted growth, how were the belly scales? I ask since Rango is growing pretty well and has doubled in size since I purchased him earlier this year. Definitely has been shedding once every three weeks.

Rango's scales do run almost the entire length of the snake with the exception of maybe 4 or 5 scales just above the vent. Heck, all the talk about the inbreeding is freaking me out just a tad since my first specimen turns out to be one of which people have never seen so bad. He is still a hearty eater and never skips a meal which is twice per week. Diet wise I alternate the foods being mice then followed by quail then by wild salmon. I was at an asian market the other day of which they sell frog legs which I picked up a package and will feed him some of that on Tuesday.

Breeding wise I will not breed Rango. I am in the market for a female and will purchase another male when time and finances allow. It would be interesting to see the results of him breeding to a not so related female but talking with some experts I am not sure I am willing to take that risk. My gf was really bummed out at this and I told her we will just see if he makes it past the 3-4 year since from what I hear tends to be the time frame where the inbreds cause issues.

Bob- Rango IS a high red variation. Interesting call.

I would breed him to a snake of different lineage for sure. The only thing is finding one that you know for sure is genetically what you need. It's a shame a few wc specimens can't be harvested and used for breeding programs to get fresh genes into the captive gene pool and then release them. Also releasing cb snakes to boost up the populations would be nice if it could be done safely. (Disease etc)
Beautiful snake you have there in any case. Good luck.

One more thing. The breeder of Rango feeds rodents and told me it is not necessary for feed other items. However, I knew better than that.

Matt,

I have produced a ton of hatchling Dry' over the years. I keep all my snakes in the same manner/caging/ temps etc. They are all fed the same diet. I incubate eggs at very tightly controlled temp / humidity / 02 levels. I have seen very few wild caught Drymarchon with aberrant scales. What I have seen first hand is if you breed wc x wc Dry's every single hatchling is perfect. This is true with all the species.
If you breed same maternal line snakes you start to see the aberrations. Our European keepers with a small gene pool have the very same issue happening. When you breed sibling red throat Indigos together the offspring is very high red. Perhaps what we see as beauty is actually weakness. I think we will see more and more of this in the future.

Alan B

hi alan,

this is really interesting, sad, but interesting. the WC comparisons within Drys is a good test. do you see scale aberrations in the second generation from WC Drys, if you breed sibs, or early within a single maternal line?

have you out bred Drys (one or both parents) with scale aberrations and have the scale anomalies disappear?

cool stuff!

matt

Matt,

I Have outcrossed CB Yt Cribos with aberrations with WC and the hatchlings appear perfect. Same with BT and Unicolor Cribos.

On a side note this is also happening with certain lines of the Mussurana as well. Aberrant tail/belly scales , stunted growth, enlarged hearts .Perhaps the high metabolism Colubrids can't handle inbreeding like the Cornsnake and Ball Python can ?

Alan B

alan,

this is all crazy interesting. when we look at the history of the eastern indigo, protected since the 1970s and the relative lack of problems, inbreeding-wise, for a number of years suggests two things. either there has been a constant trickle of WC specimens into the captive breeding population, or serious inbreeding didn't start until recently. of course, communication from the earlier days was extremely restricted and we document so much more information now.

one of my suspicions as to why so few couperi breeders sent me skins for genotyping was either they suspected or knew they had WC genes and were afraid of being caught, or they didn't want others to know that their stock was related to each other. the whole story has to be interesting, but i'm sure we'll never know all of it.

matt

what a beauty! must be the ventral split scaled morph. I think the genotype work on the easterns by matt rand gave us the answer. few people successfully bred their indigos back in the 90's. all of today's indigos pretty much came from those few females with few outliers. fast forward three generations of inbreeding and we're seeing the genetic bottleneck effect. if you noticed most of the original breeders who worked with indigos are no longer working with them anymore because of inbreeding issues. red throats were selectively inbred for "redder" throats back in the late 90's early 2000's and therefore, are now more prone to genetic issues. aberrant/split scales are not exclusive to inbred indigos. i have seen them within the Pituophis genus also. when I got back into drymarchon, took me about an hour or two of internet searches to figure out what was going on especially on the west coast. thank God I located alan b. I think I see the breeders initials on the aberrant scales j/k!

Learned a lot from this thread. More than I wanted to know, frankly. I had heard about this being a problem in Europe, but did not know how serious it was over here. Perfect storm of unfortunate events. Small captive population of protected species and a limited gene pool. Highly mobile species with huge home range (like an indigo) are more likely to suffer from inbreeding than relatively immobile species like a ball python. Purebred dogs which are closely related also exhibit genetic flaws (deafness, missing teeth, shortened life spans). Good info, just a bit tough to take.

Those are the worst belly scales i have ever seen. i have been keeping snakes for 38 years & breeding for well over 20 years. Have kept several Indigos & Cribos but never bred them.
I purchased several Indigos from a well known breeder. One red phase female had split belly scales & stunted growth & then she died suddenly at around 3 -4 years of age.
Another female died with eggs inside her, some had burst.
The remaining animals were all relatively perfect but went out in trade. I still have one gorgeous 6ft black phase male.
In my experience of breeding other snakes, deformities can occur from fluctuating temps. Maybe these belly scale issues are to do with temps? & or in breeding. There seems to be way too much in breeding throughout the hobby.
Carpet pythons can have neurological issues for example. All Australian herps originate from probably WC smuggled animals & are probably somewhat in bred. australia does not allow the export of ANY wildlife, nor does South Africa as well as many other countries.
We need to be more aware of this issue & try to avoid in breeding & think about the animals we are producing & putting out there.

Good post.....I've seen stunted indigos with PERFECT scutes!!!!.....& normal sized and proportioned animals with abnormal scutes!!!...... Maybe the spilt scutes of another environmental factor along with possible genetic influence......I've been told that the inbreds tend to have internal anatomical abnormalities .... And I'm guessing physiological dysfunction as well..... JUST SAYIN.....

yes, i lost two within their first two years, one with massive sarcomas throughout its body and one with pericardial edema that was NOT caused by infection. both animals were worked up by a university pathology lab. i reported both findings on another site.

unfortunately, this happened over 5 or 6 years ago and i didn't look at the scutes on these two. pretty expensive lessons.

matt

stunted growth, congestive heart failure due to anatomic abnormalities of the heart, sarcomas and other tumors, etc... unfortunately most do not manifest itself until after the eastern is older. the only visual sign we as hobbyist can use is split/aberrant scales to judge the amount of inbreeding. if you've seen enough of them (and there's plenty of inbred easterns floating around for everyone to look at, split scales due to inbreeding are very distinct looking.

Yes expensive lessons indeed. I think i spent $8000 on Easterns from a well known breeder. Two females died & as i said in my other post all the others bar one male have gone out in trade.

The only way i will try with Easterns again is when Alan B breeds some truly healthy unrelated animals. He truly cares about this problem & is trying to do something about it. Plus he is a top guy.

It is a shame the authorities involved will not let some legally wild caught animals into the private sector for responsible breeders to work with. i would be happy to pay for the privilege.

Yup. I have been chatting with AlanB and he is a stand up guy who is honest and led me in the right direction to obtain genetically healthier specimens.

It seems to be Rango may be in the category of a goner but im still hoping he will have a good long life. All I can do is provide a proper habitat and varied diet. He is growing fast so that helps me feel a tad better. I am also enjoying everyones input on the matter and I am sure other reptile hobbyist will stumble upon this and learn. As with you all I am just upset some people knowingly heavily inbreed these animals of which the captive population was already limited in their genetic availability.

Question for everyone, does anyone know how many original breeders there were and what about older snakes who have not been so heavily inbred if they are still around to help turn around the mistakes of the past 10 years at least?

Umm... When I looked into it. I only found four founder lines and most of those have been crossed. There have been trickles of WC stock but I couldn't verify it for obvious reasons. Another interesting factoid is that Ken Krysko did some genetic analysis study for Orianne and found that the panhandle clade and eastern seaboard clade of Eastern indigos genetically diverged more than 100,000 years ago.

And...... To the genetically uneducated this means.......OLO

This means when Orianne decided to release indigos back to Alabama, they release ones that were from Georgia not knowing they were genetically different. In one release, 100,000 years of evolution went down the drain.....

my bad, I forgot a zero. the two populations diverged 1,000,000 years ago. that's a long time. below is the link. don't know if Ken Krysko published the work yet but he has presented the data to Orianne/FWS and has been pretty well accepted by the scientific community.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/herpetology/kk/kkresearch.htm

Thanks my drymarcon friend

WOW!

Thank you, to everyone who's contributed to this thread. I know I'm late to the party, so a bit of background: I now have 4 couperi, all from the same very well known breeder. 2 are from '12, 2 from '13 - the '12's are red throat, the '13s pure black.

These are my only snakes; but please don't think that's lack of experience - I've had (many thousands of) snakes since the late '60's, and owned and bred WC couperi many decades ago. Then I lived in Hawaii for many years, hence no snakes....

(I recognize a couple of the names of the guys on this thread)

To the point, though:
Of my 4 snakes, only the eldest male has any divided scutes. Interestingly, his '12 female counterpart has some centralized black spotting on the anterior scutes, which hint at the divisions on the male. Neither of the all-blacks have divisions. All snakes are from the same breeder (Yes, you know whom),

I don't like "morphs" and inbreeding for weirdness. I do love couperi, more than any other serpent, from Dendroaspis to Diadophis.

I would question whether perhaps mating some all-blacks to some red-throats might just help with breaking up the inbreeding forced upon us by the limited legal stock?

I'm also a member of Orianne; maybe a petition from them, and a group of legal breeders, might convince USFWS to allow a gene trade with a WC population? While I understand and appreciate the point made about overriding a million years of separation, might that not be a way to trade some valuable genetics?

Just trying to restart valuable conversation; please don't anyone get mad....

Chris Powell