Carpet pythons at Melbourne zoo

[Fuscus]

Its scary when an organization as great as the Melbourne Zoo puts out a web page like this

http://www.zoo.org.au/animal_page.cfm?area_id=25&zoo_id=1&animal_id=161

Or am I just too fussy?

 

[wattso]

Lol its a "very limited fact's" sheet

 

[Fuscus]

Look at the photo and the scientific name. They are both carpets but ...

 

[mystic_herps]

I believe at one point all species of carpets were classed as variegata before they were scientifically named as subspecies...

 

[Fuscus]

That makes sense, I seem to (dimly) remenber a time when there were only Diamonds and Carpets. Then the type locale for the variegata was Darwin. Variegata is a good name for carpets as a whole but fits less well for the Darwin variety.

Just looked at my books - the Ehmann book (My favorite book - which I purchased in 1994 and was published in 1992) has only three sub species
M. s. spilota the diamond
M. s. imbricata the form from south west WA
M. s. variegata the rest

Thanx Mysty

 

[mystic_herps]

No worries!

I hate when they change the scientific names all the time.
Thankfully at this point of time reptiles are not changing regularly as is happening in other hobbies.Although I believe there to be confusion between Antaresia & Liasis in the children species,as well as variegata & sub species of carpets to an extent (due to older writings in books that are way past due).In the cichlid hobby it gets rather confusing.I have been away for a few years and just starting to return and most of the fish I know have had name changes lol...

 

[africancichlidau]

Melbourne Zoo is in Melbourne, Victoria and Victoria lists ALL carpets as M.S.Variegata apart from the Bredl.

 

[mystic_herps]

They still do Afric?

 

[Fuscus]

Yea - the african cichlids and the darwf ciclid names seemed to change every second week.
Was it you who said that they are working in giving the integrade coastal full sub-species status? And ther is work going on with Antaresia - the stimpsons could be sub-divided.
Just looking at the Coggers book (2000 edition). It has the carpet python divided the same as the older Ehmann book as well as all the Antaresia lumped in with Liasis. But the worse mistake is that it has the Adelaide Blue tongue rated as extinct dispite a good color picture in the appendix. Just to put the record straight, I think that overall it is a very good book and a work of this size is a major piece of work but I think his updates are just additions to the appendix. It is overdue for a major revision.

 

[africancichlidau]

Yup, still do Mystic

 

[mystic_herps]

Was it you who said that they are working in giving the integrade coastal full sub-species status? And ther is work going on with Antaresia - the stimpsons could be sub-divided.

Nope wasn't me.
I think that was no-one that mentioned that.

 

[wattso]

Ive seen Blue varigata's in a book of australian snakes by Graham gow. Quite a striking snake. mind its an old book, it aslso had carpets/diamonds /varigata but no new subspecies names i.e mcdowellii ...imbricata etc

 

[mystic_herps]

Weird rules in Vic then lol.

So I take it variegata is written in record keeping books for all carpet species?

Wouldnt this make cross breeding a very easy practise in that state
Very scary thought...

 

[Fuscus]

In SA it is illegal to cross breed, even between sub-species. So it is quite possible for last years young to suddenly become illegal.

 

[saikrett]

there are 8 sub-species on the NSW licencse
Morelia bredli
Morelia spilota
Morelia s. cheynei
Morelia s. imbricata
Morelia s. mcdowelli
Morelia s. mcdowelli / spilota (natural intergrade)
Morelia s. metcalfei
Morelia s. variegata

 

[Fuscus]

SA only has M. spilota and M. bredli on the list.
Does this mean that the jungles I'm importing will change sub-species? lol.

 

[saikrett]

my guess is that you could just put them under m. Spilota as the jungles in NSW are classes as
m. Spilota cheynei.

 

[Fuscus]

In SA you ID the species by a code. All M. spilota go under the code c2625. It appears that the diamond has been recently moved into that code.
Anyhow, its only red tape, I'll mark then in the book as M. spilota c2625 but refer to then as cheynei. That way everyone is happy

 

[saikrett]

sounds good

 

[Guest]

in nsw we also got morelia amethisina and our green tree pythons anre chrondropython viridis does other states have chrondopython or morelia? ive seen green tree pythons listed as both