Holy_jessus
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Possibly a cross breed? Its the size im also inserted in, he is tiny compared to my other spotteds, and I know the person who breed him was pulled up by fauna for not doing things by the books? This is also a photo of one of my actual banded pygmys, and the patterning is just so similar? (She's in shed at the moment)I can see what you're seeing, and there's a sort of superficial resemblance, but neither of them looks at all like it is actually a Pygmy Banded.
Thanks for the reply really appreciated the feed back, have a few banded pygmys now, and just had a odd feeling, but glad to know he is what I purchasedThe pattern doesn't look like it either. I can see the superficial resemblance but it doesn't look like the pattern of a Pygmy Banded in a diagnostic way, just a superficial way.
You can speculate about hybrids (hybrids are not the same thing as crossbreeds by the way, and since there is so far no such thing as a reptile breed, there can't be a cross bred reptile... yet) all day long, hey, it could be, and hybrids can come out looking like anything. Without knowing the history of an Antaresia you can't be 100% sure that it's pure, but I can tell you 100% that those are either pure Spotteds or Spotted hybrids, certainly not pure anything other than Spotteds, and there's nothing to indicate they are crossed with anything else.
It's difficult to articulate in words all the clear differences between your male and a Pygmy Banded, but an obvious different you will be able to see is that the pattern of your male has jagged edges. This is not unusual for Spotteds but doesn't occur in Pygmy Bandeds. You'll also see a tendency for pale lateral stripes with clean edges on Pygmy Bandeds (as with most Antaresia) but this never occurs in pure Spotteds. Yours won't have it. Hybrids not including Spotted blood rarely have it and I've never seen it in F1 Spotted hybrids. The overall morphology is different as Nick_75 says, but most of the morphology is difficult to put into words.
Your pair there look like locality mixed but 'pure' Spotteds (maculosa), but it's impossible to be 100% sure without their history. All we can say for sure is that they're at least partially maculosa.
The next time you have either species out have a good look at the head of each animal, in particular the scales just behind the nasal scale. The image below shows the loreal scales of each species. Spotted pythons (image on left) have a lower loreal scale count than the banded pygmy python (image on right). Spotted python loreal scales being larger than the smaller, more tightly clustered banded pygmy python. The images also display the general morphology differences in head shape.
View attachment 329441
Yes, I see your point. If you did a scale count for every part of the body (ventrals, sub-cuadals, etc) and found that the count was around the mean count of most of the areas of that species, could you be sure of classification?
Have you had the chance to examine many know hybrids?
DNA testing would be the only sure way of determining the species of individuals of unknown origin.
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