Hi,

Here the reply :

>>Do you have/know of any other Asian Rats with reliable locality data?

I have M. bellus bellus from western part of Mt. Mangshan (Hunan, china). I have M. bellus chapaensis from Sa Pa (Lao Cai, Vietnam). I have O. porphyraceus pulchra from Mt. Da Wei Shan (Yunnan, china). I have O. porphyraceus laticinctus from Cameron highlands (Malaysia).

>>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.

All snakes I get from my fiends in china, vietnam and malaysia are very reliable persons, so I know for 99% the exact locality of my animals.



>>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.

This is very sad indeed. Like the first captive O. porphyraceus pulchra who came into the hobby (Pro Exotics have this line as well), where NOT pure pulchra but a hybrid beteen porphyraceus porphyraceus and poprhyraceus pulchra. You can check it by counting their ventral scales.
The only very pure locality pulchra in the hobby I have, because I know the person who caught them very good and so I know exact locality data. Especially with those p. poprhyraceus and p. pulchra (who look very identical) it is very important to keep clean lines.

>>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.

That would be very very very sad.....

>>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 born.

All my specimens that I keep are all wild caught and F1's.

>>Sorry for the long post but it is asked in the interest of preserving the uniqueness and integrity of these species/subspecies for current and future keepers.

Yes this is very very important!

Thanks for your post!

Best regards,

Gidi van de Belt

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