Boa & Python Breeding together - Page 12

Ptindy · 08-30-04, 06:15 PM

Hey Goopers! I just read this whole forum and I am interested in the ending of this story. Let me know please michaelpytyck@hotmail.com
I'm sorry for some of the bashing at the beginning of this forum. People assume too much sometimes. My first snake shed I thought the thing ate it because his eyes were done being cloudy and i couldn't find any skin. Nowhere in any caresheets did it say they would go back to normal before the shed. It didn't take them long to figure out the snake didn't eat the shed. I wish people replying in this forum would have back tracked through your exprience/claim, instead of assuming you were 100 percent sure that's what it was. I'm confused reading this post I wrote myself so don't worry if you didn't get it. Just add me to that list please haha

Goopers5 · 08-31-04, 07:54 AM

We are waiting to get blood taken and then we have to send it out. I will update you, promise, but it is all taking a little longer than we orignally planned... I will let you know!

THanks for the compliment of sticking it out, I have a lot of patience

and I did learn a lot from the people who did give advice

.

I will add you to the list!

Dom · 08-31-04, 08:28 AM

I am very interested in the result .. best of luck

dominicjules@hotmail.com

Tx

Goopers5 · 08-31-04, 09:40 AM

No problem! Added ya to the list

AnniesMom · 08-31-04, 12:10 PM

My my, it must have been a while since I've been on this site. Last time I posted with any regularity, people were a little more... relaxed? There is a lot of great support and information in this post, but I've spent over an hour sorting through the insults and garbage to get to it.

Goopers5: I hope you don't let some of the more rabid members scare you off. This is an awesome site and I bet that you have already learned more in a few weeks than most learn in years. If you are not careful, you might just get to be ed-u-ma-cated like the rest of us!

I would like to know what happens in the future with this babies. I will PM you my email addy. Best of luck.

Tracy

Goopers5 · 08-31-04, 01:50 PM

Got ya in my list, thanks!

timminsreptiles · 09-07-04, 11:24 AM

WOW.....After reading this whole thread,nowiknow not to come here when i come across something i dont know.....Although i dont think these babies are a result of crossing the boa w/ the python, i think these people should be helped rather than beeing bashed and made out to look stupid.........Isnt help what this place is for??

BoidKeeper · 09-07-04, 01:36 PM

There are being helped now that they have proven that they are not a troll. No doubt some of us were less than inviting but I think that you see the thread turn its self around. Please don't let a few bad apples spoil you impression of the whole site or its members. There are a lot of great members here that enjoy trying to help people. Some people just need to be reminded once in a while that if you can't say anything nice you shouldn't say anything at all.
I for one asked them to prove me wrong and so far they are doing a good job!
Cheers,
Trevor

crazyboy · 09-07-04, 03:05 PM

goopers5: i would also be interested in the results click the tab up on the right hand corner of my post for the email. thanks.

timminsreptiles · 09-08-04, 10:36 AM

Goopers......Just wondering how things are going with your test.....i would also be very interested in the results.....

Goopers5 · 09-08-04, 01:05 PM

I will keep you updated! We have hit a snag, so it might be a little while, but I promise to let you know!

Nicki · 09-08-04, 02:04 PM

Hi Gooper,

I've finally made it thru the whole thread, and just wondered if you could add my email address to your list as well (it's in my signature). I'm really curious to see what happens. How are the babies doing? Do you have any new pics of them?

Nicki

concept3 · 09-08-04, 02:25 PM

well i just spent a good hour reading all 12 pages. My email is concept_03@hotmail.com I would also love to know what really happened. Oh and 1 more thing lizlady your posts made me sick,

TheRedDragon · 09-08-04, 02:56 PM

That is a rather unusual cross. I'm quite against crossing different species, but, I'm quite interested in hearing about the result. I'm also curious in seeing some updated pics of the babies.

wimplatenkamp · 09-22-04, 05:24 AM

I have something to tell!!!!

A giant snake in a Dutch zoo has achieved two world-firsts, and it's all down to her remarkable ability to reproduce through so-called ‘virgin birth'. It's the first time that parthenogenesis has been seen in the great snakes (pythons and boas) and it's the only known case of exact clones being produced naturally in any snake species. Till now!!!!

Lying coiled up in a shiny, mottled heap against the vivarium window, a four-metre long, nameless Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus, also known as a Dark Tiger Python) at Artis Zoo in Amsterdam is going about her normal routine, unaware of the excitement she has been causing in the scientific world of reproductive biology.

Every year for the past six years she has been laying her annual clutch of leathery eggs, just like most other captive female snakes. And, as with all the animals kept in the reptile house at Artis, every year her eggs have been removed and examined by staff, because they can reveal a lot about the condition of the females.

But this specific snake proved to be very special, as the Curator of Reptiles, Fish and Invertebrates, Eugène Bruins, reveals: "She always lays some eggs that are nicely big and white, about 9cm long, but about 60% are much smaller and more yellow. These are always infertile, but we did find in some of the [big] eggs some embryos."

Storage story
To begin with, Bruins and his colleagues assumed that the python must have mated with a male during the first two years of her life, before she arrived at Artis Zoo. If this had happened, she could have been using sperm stored in her body over a number of years to produce fertilised eggs – a well-known phenomenon in several species of reptiles including some snakes. But after five years had passed and viable embryos were still being found in her eggs, Bruins started to wonder whether he had a world record for the longest known sperm-storage, or whether something else was going on.

Bruins called in the help of his friend, Tom Groot, then a Masters degree biology student at the University of Amsterdam, who did genetic fingerprinting on both the snake and her embryos. "Fingerprinting uses a random set of characters from the entire genome," he explains. "If a father was involved you'd expect to find characters in the embryos that don't relate to the mother. We didn't find that, so the first thing to conclude was that there couldn't be any sperm-storage."

The alternative explanation was that the embryos had resulted from parthenogenesis, or so-called ‘virgin birth', where eggs develop into new individuals although they are unfertilised by a male. "Virgin birth is quite common in some lizards and is known in a few snake species," says Bruins, "But it was never yet known in the family of pythons or boas, so that was a world first already. But even more special was that all other snake species reproducing this way produce only males and our embryos were all females."

Identical copies
The sex of the offspring was confirmed by anatomy specialists at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and, in fact, further analysis of their genetic material showed that they were all exact clones of the mother – a phenomenon never before seen in snakes at all. "It's really exciting to see it and know it is possible," enthuses Tom Groot, who is now studying parthenogenesis in mites for his PhD. "We don't know if it can happen in these pythons in the wild. But with this mechanism a single female would be able to start an entirely new population which makes it, in the evolutionary sense, very interesting."

Hatching a name
Now that Artis Zoo is aware of the very special embryos appearing in its reptile house every year, there are plans now to try incubating this snake's eggs for the very first time. Some of the offspring may be given away to other zoos or to researchers specialising in parthenogenesis in snakes, but some would be kept in Amsterdam. Eugène Bruins: "We want to see if they're as healthy as the mother and whether they have the same spots in the same place! And in four years time we want to see if they can reproduce parthenogenetically as well." As for the mother snake herself – according to Bruins she may finally be given a name: "Some people including myself have suggested Maria, which is perhaps not surprising!"