Twins

[Scales Zoo]

I will find a way to get a picture, damn the kids who stole my camera, damn them all to hell!

On Sunday, our albino het for patternless burmese pythons started hatching from their eggs.

One of the little guys had his head poking out of the egg, but there looked like there were bubbles still being created from inside the egg. At that time I mentioned the possibility of twins.

Today, we found 2 heads poking out of the egg. We seperated that egg and gave it it's own rubbermade,so when they emerge we know which 2 the twins are.

To confirm that it is twins, and that one hatched snake didn't crawl into anothers egg, I will have to wait till all those are done hatching and count the empty eggs vs the baby snakes, but I'm pretty sure we got twins!

Elvira (the mom) is a sister to the triplets. I will try phoning Vern today, but I do beleive he has had twins before from eggs Ally (Elvira and Triplets mother) laid.

How common is twins with burms? I'm just wondering if Elvira could be genetically predisposed to having twins in an egg.

I wasnt' planning on keeping 2 babies, but I'd kind of like to keep the twins. Of course, if there is anyone who wants to trade their digital camera for twin albino burmese pythons, email me - I really miss having a dig cam. Canon S1's or G5's accepted.

Ryan

[Scales Zoo]

I snapped some pictures of the twins with the video camera.

This is the egg with the twins, you can see the 2 heads and 2 tails, I will try to get better ones later.

http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburms/DVC00181.jpg

They also appear smaller than the others.
http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburms/DVC00182.jpg

I'll try and get better pictures of them later.

I did talk to Vern, and he confirmed that Ally(mom to Elvira and to Triplets) had and egg with twins from a different male (than the one that fathered the triplets) the year before Elvira was hatched.

And I also think I saw another egg with a head poking out, bubbling as if there was a twin in that one too. I will keep my eye on that egg.

I hope the twins are females, I'll breed them to one of the triplets (all males) in the future.

Ryan

[JD@reptiles]

congrats!

[BOAS_N_PYTHONS]

RYAN / SHEILA:

Congrats on the new additions.
Very nice update on them indeed.

Keep us posted.

Cya...

Tony

[Stav.T]

Congrats Ryan!

Stav

[Invictus]

Right on!!! Congrats guys. :)

[Jungle Jen]

Thats really neat guys! Congrats, and keep us updated on the twins and the other mystery egg!

[AlexPan]

Congrats Ryan and Sheila!

[lakeridgekennel]

Congrats!!!!!!
I can't wait to get mine!

Sean

[python_diva_06]

awesome awesome awesome stuff! congrats!!!

[marisa]

On queensnake they had a debate over two snakes in one egg. Generally it turned out that it is not true twins. Actually I think this particular debate was about bearded dragons.....anyways.... A poster qouted out of the "The Reproductive Husbandry of Pythons and Boas" with this paragraph:

"Since snakes generally give birth to multiple offspring from multiple ova, all littermates, whether from viviparious or oviparous snakes, are probably non-identical twins(or triplets, quadruplets, etc). In vitellogenic oviparous snakes (snakes that lay yolked eggs) such as pythons, the yolk does not divide during cell replication. Instead, the embryo develops on top of the yolk. Therefore, the occurrence of two embryos in one egg must be caused by two separate embryos being '"accidentally'" shelled together during passage through the oviduct. They are not, therefore, true twins.
Since these '"twins"' are not true twins, this penomenon is a random event and not an inheritable trait. Furthermore, the number of young is unchanged, but the number of eggs is reduced by one."

The only reason I even remember this person posting this was because of your photo, and I had read the debate on queensnake with some interest as people gave really good info in it.

In either case, twins, faternal, identical, etc, those are mighty cute babies and you can't beat two for the price of one.

Marisa

[Scales Zoo]

They are twins, but not identical twins, there is a difference.

A human can have twins that aren't identical, but they are still considered " twins" - you know....

The patterns are different between the 2 snakes, but they did come out of the same egg, which is cool.

Anyone ever heard the statistics involved with twins. Like is it 1/1000 eggs or less?

A lot of people I know have had it happen, it's not really rare - but it's neat - and it finally happened to us.

Ryan

[marisa]

The paragraph I posted was more in relation to the idea it might be genetic. Accourding to that paragraph, it wouldn't be. But maybe not "egging" each embryo is.

Anyways must of this is much above my head still and I just wanted to throw that out there as I thought it was interesting.

Marisa

[Linds]

Ryan,
Very neat and congrats on the clutch. How many were there in total?

Marisa,
Thanks for sharing that info!

[Scales Zoo]

There were 40 eggs, 1 of which I beleive was infertile, and 3 of which I think got water drops on them and are no longer good.

24/25 that were on the bottom have pipped, 8 babies total (from 7 of those eggs) are now out, and the 15 eggs in the other egg box have yet to pip, infact they are just starting to dimple.

They seem to be quite a bit behind the first ones - and the temperature difference was very minor, except for the first 10 days, their was a 2 F difference.

I'm gonna split eggs up in the future - this is interesting.

Ryan

[beth wallbank]

very cool to see Elvira have babies guys! You will have to post some new pics when the babies are all out and cleaned up.

[Tim_Cranwill]

Congratulations, Ryan and Sheila! :)

It will be nice to finally figure out what's going on inside that snake of Vern's... if it's a dwarf thing, put me on the list! lol

Very cool. :)

[Scales Zoo]

Update:

2 of the eggs in the top (cooler) egg container have now started to pip. They barely dimpled, and the other eggs aren't dimpled yet.

Looks like only 23 of the 24 good eggs on the bottom pipped themselves, we cut the last one open. Not sure if the baby in there is alive or not, will look closer in the morning.

They are taking longer to emerge than I thought. There are now 11 snakes out, they started pipping on Sunday.

3 on the left side were first, then 7 eggs on the right side, and now the ones in the center are starting.

Katt and Vanan took some very good pictures with Vanans camera, I will upload them and post them tommorrow.

Ryan

[jparker1167]

congrats and good luck with them

[Scales Zoo]

Another Update:

25 snakes out of 24 eggs from the bottom chamber. Found 12 out this morning, and the last one came out around dinner time.

There were 26 eggs in the bottom egg chamber, 14 eggs in the top egg chamber - not 25 and 15 like I was thinking.

1 egg on the bottom we figured was a slug the day it was laid, but we incubated it anyway to see what would happen. The other egg was the egg we manually pipped (I think). I decided the baby was dead (I had poked it a few times) and when I pulled it out I found a narrow faced, under developed, kinked and curled baby that had seperated from his still large yoke sack – I named him George and videoed his funeral.

I also weighed the babies. Most babies weighed 122 grams. The smallest (non twin) weighed 104 grams, and the largest weighed 133 grams.

The twins weighed 53 and 58 grams each. That is a total of 113, which is less than half of the average of the clutch. The larger babies appear to be 22’’ – 23’’ long, the twins are around 18’’ and quite slender.

We weighed 2 of the eggs, which have not pipped yet (in the top egg container, where the eggs did not dimple before they hatch) - and they both weighed 250 grams. I did not have the presence of mind to weigh all the eggs after they were laid, I will do that next time. I also did not get any weights of the eggs on the bottom chamber, but I’m quite sure they were less than the top eggs. It will be interesting to see what the top babies weigh.

Pictures to come soon.

Ryan

[Scales Zoo]

Katt and Vanan came over with Vanan’s camera. They both took some pictures (their names are on all of them, except for the one of Katts that I turned and cropped to show the S shape in the pattern)

So anyways…. Here they are.

Vanan did a great job on these low light pictures. I was recently looking for a good picture of a baby burm hatching from an egg, and besides Steve Gooch’s, I did not find any good pictures. There was a newspaper lady over today taking pictures, and got some pictures of the clean eggs in the top of the container hatching.
http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburmsvanan/babyegg.jpg

http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburmsvanan/elviraeggs.jpg


Here is a picture of a twin beside an average sized baby.
http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburmsvanan/twinnorm.jpg


Twins beside their egg.
http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburmsvanan/twinsnice.jpg

http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburmsvanan/twins1.jpg


A really nice picture.
http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburmsvanan/babyburmsnice.jpg


I haven’t inspected the burms for long words in their pattern yet, but the 3rd one that hatched out had a big S that made me think of Superman, or Supermod (hey, Matt K, want a burm?). Noticed a few other letters, so contact me if your name starts with a S, a W, a M or a O (just kidding).
http://www.scaleszoo.com/pics/babyburmsvanan/supermod.jpg

Ryan

[vanderkm]

Congrats on the twins - very nice indeed! They are beautiful - such intense coloration,

mary v.

[Tim_Cranwill]

Great pics, guys! They look WICKED! :)

[lakeridgekennel]

Nice pics!
Very cool.

[AgaR]

they are awesome!! :D
Congrats man!
Ciao
Alex

[jjaj02]

Wow cute babies. I like the twins. The smaller guys are always the cutest :D Great pics too!!

[JDouglas]

Nice lookin babies you have there! Congrats!!!

Check out this pic of twins. I think the one on the right is better lookin...

http://showcase.netins.net/web/reptiles/stuff/family.JPG

[dia]

So cute!