Posted by:
Aaron
at Tue Sep 21 17:33:59 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Aaron ]
Do you have/know of any other Asian Rats with reliable locality data? Or bloodlines that can at least be traced to a particular importer and/or exporter? Not neccessarily the name of the exporter but at least the city and country where the exporter was based out of and the year they were exported? This would at least give one the ability to make a reasonable assumption of where the snakes came from to the point that one would at least be fairly certain of accurate species/subspecies identification.
For example O. p. laticincta that could be traced to a Malaysian exporter. Knowing that the exporter was based in Malaysia would allow one to be fairly certain that they really were selling pure laticincta, since it would be highly unlikely that say O. p. vaillanti got mixed in with the shipment.
Right now my collection is mainly locality Graybands and Arizona Mtn. Kings. I really like the L. mexicana ssps. too but it is so hard to find traceable bloodlines anymore since wild caughts are no longer being imported/exported. When they were being imported/exported very few people in the hobby cared about locality. Also many people have unkowingly and knowingly mixed them with other species and subspecies without keeping accurate records, or if they did few of their customers cared to ask for those records. As a result, over time the purity of most L. mexicana bloodlines is uncertain. For this reason I don't work with very many L. mexicana anymore. The ones that I do have I just consider them generic because all I can base things off of is looks.
The same thing is probably going to happen with the Asian Rats. Already several subspecies have been intentionally crossed. Not that I'm against crossing per say but I fear that as time goes by and the value of these species/subspecies drops fewer and fewer people will bother with making accurate identifications or keeping detailed records. If at some point import/export ceases the original data will be lost. Then the predominant situation may be that we are no longer able to be certain of the identifications of what we have in captivity.
It would be beneficial if a few people would now, while we still have wild caught and/or F1 specimens, make efforts to obtain and retain as much data as possible and pass that information on to interested buyers of captive borns.
Sorry for the long post but it is asked in the intrest of preserving the uniqueness and integrity of these species/subspecies for current and future keepers.
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RE: Maculophis bellus bellus *PICS* - Aaron, Tue Sep 21 17:33:59 2010
