Update and Hello (Kiss your modems good-bye)

[kevyn]

Hey all. I haven't been able to make it over here very often lately. My snakes and my duties over on constictors.com have kept me rather busy as of late. I just thought I'd pop by for a quick update and some pics.

The albino retic project continues to move forward. The male albino I have and the het female are both growing rapidly and eating everything is sight. My tiger het for albino female just shed last night. I hope to get her off rats on and on to rabbits right bloody quick. I'm also awaiting another dark lavender female albino retic and another het for albino male.

I'm looking to expand my interests in reticulated pythons this year into the either the sunfire morph (if any are available) or into the genetic striped and possibly the super dwarf retics. Here's a few pics of the retics...

female het albino

female tiger het albino

lavender albino male

Dark lavender female albino (photo by Mike Wilbanks)

Can't wait for this girl to arrive.

Thanks for looking all.

 

[Ricko]

they are hot looking snakes kev, i have been visiting american sites quite a bit lately and love the tiger and super tiger retics. that last picture is AMAZING

 

[dobermanmick]

I love the lavenders there the ones for me !!!

 

[Menagerie]

The lavenders are incredible!!!

 

[BROWNS]

FMD,those albinos are insane!!!Apparently the albino carpets will get lavenders,snows which will be awesome to see if it ever happens which i'm sure it will.The patterns on all those animals are wild,i'd love a super dwarf one that looks the same as any of those!

 

[kevyn]

Thanks guys. A lavender albino carpet would be very interesting indeed. I'm not sure how that will happen though. With the albino retics, the three phases, white, lavender, and purple, all originated from the first wc albino imported from Malaysia by Bob Clark in 1991. Unless there has been some lavenders from the original breeding of the albino carpet, or there is a new strain of albino carpet, I'm not sure how this is going to be possible to be produce lavender albino carpets?

I'm hoping to buy into a project that would be really impressive. All I'll say is it's a retic project, and I'd have a 3 year head start on everyone except for 2 breeders. I won't get into too much more about it, but my fingers are crossed at this point. I'll let you all know if the deal works out.

 

[instar]

That last one is THE most beautiful snake ive EVER seen! just ..Wow!!!

 

[kevyn]

That's what I said the first time I saw that picture. I can't wait of her to get here. Damn CITIES!

 

[Wrasse]

Love that last pic. Those colours are magnificent.

I now have a new desktop.

 

[Sdaji]

Unless there has been some lavenders from the original breeding of the albino carpet, or there is a new strain of albino carpet, I'm not sure how this is going to be possible to be produce lavender albino carpets?

It wouldn't be at all surprising if 'lavender' carpets popped up, along with a huge range of colour forms. As you say, all the albino retic varieties came from one original animal. That one animal only had one allele ("gene") of relevance, but through epistatic interactions between that allele in the genomes of other retics, the other varieties were produced. As we all know, people will start hybridising the albino Darwin carpets with other carpet python subspecies in the near future. Carpet pythons as a species have massively variable phenotypes and it is very likely that epistatic interaction between the albino allele which is now available to work with and the huge allelic diversity which exists in other carpet python populations will show some interesting things. Even within the albino Darwins which have already been produced, there is great diversity. I have been fortunate enough to visit Dr Stone and see the albino carpets and was very surprised at some of what I saw. Knowing that I quite dislike albinoes, and that I'm interested in genetics, he was quite crafty in stirring my interest in them, he fairly quickly gave up on trying to convince me that they looked good, but by describing them much as wingless Drosophila with vermillion eyes in a tube he had my attention Fortunately for me, Drosophila cost about $5,000 less, have a generation time of about 1% of carpets' and are much easier to work with

 

[Liccy]

i take it they are tiger pythons?? and not venomous?? how cool are they!!

just a question...how much is the dark lavendar girl worth?? and how long till we see these around more often?

 

[Ricko]

they are reticulated pythons and are illegal in australia as they are exotics.

 

[Liccy]

:O illegal!! that'd b right.....one day....

why are they illegal?? i hate that!!

 

[Ricko]

they are not native to australia and thats all we can keep

 

[craig.a.c]

Beautiful snakes Kevin. Just a quick question- Are retics snappy and agressive compared to most other pythons??

 

[kevyn]

just a question...how much is the dark lavendar girl worth??

Alot. Mike Wilbanks' kids are definately going to university. No worries there. Especially after he gets done with me on the next round.

Beautiful snakes Kevin. Just a quick question- Are retics snappy and agressive compared to most other pythons??

They have the reputation for it don't they? Out of all my retics, I have one that is really agressive. The others are great. They are very different from any other species of pythons I work with or have worked with. Much different from any snake really. The are quite active, and very intelligent. They are actually considered to be among the most intelligent reptiles. My female het albino has the nicest temperment of any retic I've worked with. She really is a sweet little snake. She is charming her way into becoming my favourite snake I have to work with.

Retics are what you as a keeper make them. They can start out as evil little hatchlings. So evil, alot of novice keepers become intimidated by them, and leave them alone. Then they end up with evil giants that pose a serious threat. I love retics and look forward to expanding my projects to include some of the other variations in pattern and colour. They are easily my favourite species to work with. See now ya did it, you got me going.

 

[hugsta]

Aesome stuff Kev, that last one is definatelt awesome, I can see why you got it.

 

[kevyn]

Oh man, wait till you see what I"m working on now. I shouldn't say anything till I'm !00% but I'm very close to that. How do you feel about a retic that when full grown will be almost fully white, with red eyes?

 

[Snake Catcher Victoria]

do you have an assistant and is his name igor

Oh man, wait till you see what I"m working on now

lol

 

[kevyn]

do you have an assistant and is his name igor
Quote:

Close. I have a wife named Meaghan and she's a Kiwi.

I'm not actually breeding it. I'm looking at buying into a new project. I'm about 99.9% sure it's happening. It's not as nice IMO as the Clark strain albinos (lavender, white phase and purple) but it's still pretty cool. Like I said if a nearly solid white, red eyed 200lbs snake appeals to you, this is really cool.

Once I get the pics I'll post them. :wink: