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First Time Ever - A Reptile Show in MN!

  • #21
Oh the temptation was almost too much but I was able to resist buying a baby frilled dragon they had at the herp shop today as I was looking for an interesting cork bark tube. I want 3 (1 male/2 females) not just one but 1 is one step closer my goal... I suppose getting a single individual from 3 different sources would guarentee they didn't all come from the same parents - I just worry about the possibility of parasites or something from one making the others sick.
 
  • #22
Are those "Waxy Monkey Frogs"? Their eyes are so weird for some reason!

Yes they are :D

I've been curious why are snakes so outrageously expensive? They don't seem to be hard to acquire but they're always high ticket compared to other large reptiles. Do snakes not breed as often as other things?

It all depends on the snake. A normal of most anything is pretty cheap. Corns and Balls and Rats and such are in the $10-15 range. Somethings are a bit more rare or sizable, Carpets and Boas and the like, so they fetch a bit more. And then you get into the morphs... Morphs are the name of the game when it comes to snakes. If a morph is new it fetches top dollar. Things like the Banana Ball are huge money because they are extremely rare. Things like albinos tend to be less expensive because they are not as rare (albino is usually the first morph found in any species.) Clutch size can also make an impact. Example, Albinos in Burmese pythons vs. Ball pythons. Burmese pythons can have 30-50 egg clutches so breed a heterozygous pair and you will certainly get a few albinos out of it. Ball pythons have really small clutches, 4-6 is normal, 8-10 is exceptional. Much harder to get high numbers of the morph from these breedings so there are fewer of them making them more expensive.
 
  • #23
So, is a morph like a "cultivar" in a way?
A specimen with really exceptional markings that's pulled out of a clutch of babies? Are these same-clutch babies bred together to continue a morph line? Is that "ok" to do genetically?

I figured it out, seems like most frogs have horizontal slit pupils and the waxy monkeys have vertical slits. Funny how that would make them look robotic or somehow strange to me.
 
  • #24
So, is a morph like a "cultivar" in a way?
A specimen with really exceptional markings that's pulled out of a clutch of babies? Are these same-clutch babies bred together to continue a morph line? Is that "ok" to do genetically?

Kind of but not... A "morph" is a distinct genetic mutation, the most obvious one being Albino. Depending on the species you are dealing with there may only be a few morphs but with things like corn snakes and ball pythons there are 60-80 different morphs. Some are subtle and some are quite extreme. And then when you combine different morphs you get even more variety. Taking ball pythons as an example, using just the Albino morph you have:

Albino
Albino Axanthic (Snowball)
Albino Spider
Albino Pinstripe
Albino Clown
Albino Genetic-stripe
Albino Hypo
Albino Black Pastel
Albino Cinnamon
Albino Piebald
Albino Yellowbelly
Albino Ivory
Albino Pastel
Albino Spotnose
Albino Mojave

And I am probably missing a few in there...

Anyways, you can see from that short list that you have near infinite variety when you start mixing and matching morphs. If you are ever really bored check out the kingsnake.com classifieds for ball pythons, you can waste hours just looking at pics.
 
  • #25
The links I posted are for Cobra morphs.
 
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