aussie native gtps

[NickM]

Randy if you had actually read all the posts in this thread wou would find that one of the papers has already been mentioned ; Phylogeographic analysis of the green python, Morelia viridis, reveals cryptic diversity
Lesley H. Rawlingsa, b and Stephen C. Donnellan

I Am sure you can find it online somewhere, I have a copy of it, perhaps you should try reading it before commenting on the subject.

Nick

 

[The Devil]

I think that, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,.....I've seen some "Serong"ones in the flesh and they would do me any day..........

 

[Jungle_Freak]

Randy
Thanks for posting those link pics of adult morph GTPs
they are amazing ,


Roger

 

[TrueBlue]

gee i really dont know what all the fuss is about. IMO they are one of, if not the most boring snake to keep.
They remind me alot of gorilla snot.

 

[junglepython2]

So your implying that noone is capable of breeding them here?

Not at all, I can't why they would be harder to breed then any other locality, just that a few years ago there seemed to be none on the market now they are popping up everywhere. While I'm sure some are legit, there are bound to be others that aren't.

And for those interested in the article I posted up earlier this is a quote from it:

"The pattern of relationships found for mitochondrial and nuclear genes suggests the presence of two species of M. viridis, one present north of the central cordillera and the other present in southern New Guinea and Australia."

Once again it is : Phylogeographic analysis of the green python, Morelia viridis, reveals cryptic diversity Lesley H. Rawlingsa, b and Stephen C. Donnellan

 

[zulu]

re aussie

I think that, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,.....I've seen some "Serong"ones in the flesh and they would do me any day..........

Yes they are all good for me too,beggers cant be chosers,the native ones ive seen are good but i also like the green ones with the blue vertabral pattern thats attractive to look at.

 

[ravensgait]

No problem guys,
While i will agree that Carpets ETC from Oz tend to look better than most the critters we have when it comes to Chondro's Indo has more and better looking examples hands down.

Here Nick, I found one of those kinds of papers like you reference all the time.

"Americanitis fullofcrapest"
By-JoBlow Nothaveproofest

yeah I think Chondro's are each and everyone a different species because no two are exactly alike. Just like each human is a different species from everyone else because no two are exactly alike which leads to every living creature on this planet being a different species making trillions of species inhabiting this planet and millions if not billions of new species being born everyday. It is so because I said so so there so.

Nick this looks to be as good as any proof you've offered...Randy

 

[NickM]

Randy, you are making yourself look very foolish. I gave you the name of the paper, what more do you want.

Its been posted online before, though I do not remeber where, go find it and try reading it before you make beligerant and un-educated comments.

Nick

 

[gold&black...]

It's one of those things...once you've seen a true Aussie next to a mixed or non-Aussie, you can spot the difference. True Aussie greens are just awesome.

Lol Spoken like a true Aussie

 

[Retic]

Without a hint of bias LOL

 

[albino]

Greg Maxwell worship is a huge problem. He ......... presents his opinion as if it were fact

Nick

anyone else see the irony here?

 

[NickM]

Albino, if you want to worship Greg Maxwell then be my guest, but it does not make him the best authority on the subject, nor does writing a book make someone an authority on a subject.

His book is fine if taken as a basic manual for keeping GTPs alive, but beyond that its value is limited.

His opinions on locality for example are tremendously biased and his views , presented as fact, conveniently serve his agenda of promoting the mutts he prodcues and discourageing locality breeding.

Similariily the US GTP community wich certainly includes Maxwell, promote overfeeding. The results are unnaturally large GTPs , Obesity, rectal prolapses and reprodcutive problems.

Just watch the US forums, there always people talking abut enormous clutches, sometimes in excess of 40 eggs, almost always with very poor fertility. All a result of overfeeding.

GTPs are small pythons that naturally lay small clutches, a fact totally lost on US keepers and Mr Maxwell.

Nick

 

[wokka]

Interesting Nick.Not much good promoting mutations in Aus are wasted because we cant get them here. Most keepers in Aus only need a basic manual because we are at the beginning of the long road .

 

[TrueBlue]

i agree with NickM on how gtps are fed.
IMO most keepers grossly over feed them even here in oz.
In the wild they are a realitvly small medium built python, yet in captivity most seem to become very heavy bodied.
This imo is why they dont seem to live long in captivity compared to alot of other pythons, and a major reason people have trouble with them.

 

[NickM]

they are speceis that should lay around 12-18 eggs, not the 30-40 commonly seen in obese captives.

A female snake should not lay more eggs than it can coil around to incubate, yet we constantly see this with these giant obese captives. If the female cant incubate the eggs in the wild the eggs die, and we dont see this in wild animals, its wasted effort and wild snakes cant afford to waste the calories!

Look closely at pics of Us captive GTPs, you will often see verticle creases in the scales, these are essentially fat folds and are casued by obesity.

I cant count how many pics of huge "designer" GTPs I have seen, some as large as jungle carpets!

Nick

 

[Retic]

Nick, just out of curiousity but what age roughly would a Green have to be to reach 1/2 kilo in weight ? As they aren't naturally a very heavy bodied animal I would be interested to read your thoughts.

 

[TrueBlue]

the perfect example here of how captive greens are over fed in captivity are the pics that ad posted of the wild greens in cape york.
Most people would call them skinny and under fed if the were captive bred and in a collection, yet those pics imo depict a healthy green in perfect condition.

 

[Chimera]

Unfortunately the obese image of "healthy" GTPs has come from the US where the majority of captive boids are heavy bodied snakes. Greg Maxwell did state in his VHS talk that he had come to the realisation that they were obese and was trying to get them leaner to alleviate some of the health issues.

Unfortunately we are prone to following the US as much of the herpetocultural knowledge in Aus has originated from US sources (as shown by the fact that Barker '94 is the most quoted book on Australian Pythons). In more recent times though we have developed our own body of knowledge and finally looked at other Morelia to adjust our view on GTP body shape and size.

 

[NickM]

Honestly I have never weighed a GTP, I would never4 even consider breeding a female any younger than 3.5 years old and usually wait untill 4 years.

Age is a component with any python breeding as well, and at least over here people are typically always trying to breed animals as fast as possible, wich plays into the over feeding issue as well.

Nick