>Some of the photos of H. bicintus look like H.gigas! John Coburn's "The Atlas Of Snakes Of The World", and Dr. Marcos Freiberg’s "Snakes of South America" is the same lame photo. There is a photo of a H. bicintus in Frieberg’s labeled H.gigas.

Actually, all the Hydrodynastes photos in Freiberg's book are of H. gigas - again, the largely patternless upper side of the neck is the give-away. H. bincinctus is a rare snake in the wild, and even rarer in captivity. I have seen maybe half a dozen photos of that species (both versions of Campbell & Lamar, Starace's book on French Guyana snakes, Lancini & Kornacker's Venezuela book, one or two others, and that's it).

Regarding mating stimuli and temps for H. gigas, it will probably depend on where your animals came from. Hydrodynastes gigas has a huge range, from the Amazon (Guayanas etc.), where temperatures are hot year-round, down to southern Brazil, Paraguay and northern Argentina, where winters can get pretty chilly, at least intermittently. Specimens from the southern end of the range are quite likely to benefit from a period of chilling in the winter.

To Paul: I would advise keeping them separately, especially if there is any size difference - I once lost one H. gigas to its cagemate.

Cheers,

WW
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