ID confirmation / help

I have what I believe to be a male T. wagleri. It was said to originate from Sumatra. Since I don't have much experience with this species, I was wondering if there's a way to be sure... His stripes are white and blue, with a hint of rusty tones as well. His belly is solid white/turqoise.
Here he is;

ID confirmation / help P1000378

Here are four females which supposedly originate from the same area as the male.

ID confirmation / help P1000370

Should anyone care to enlighten me, thank you in advance. I'm still a bit confused about the appearances of certain localities and how to differentiate them.

No chance I could contribute something useful to Your pending problem but I do like the photographs a lot!!!
Cheers,
Guenter

That is one of the big problems in the Tropidolaemus complex. 90% of the males look the same. (in my opinion some of the philippine Tropidolaemus males are a bit different) It is hard to be sure that you got the right male.
A bad tip is - you will notice it if they breed together that you male is suitable.

You will be forced to trust what the seller said to you that is the correct distibution.

Thank you very much, both of you Smile

I think I have the 'old-school' - way of thinking; I've learned from articles etc. in the past that Waglers are a difficult species to maintain, and I haven't actively looked for them, althought I've always wanted to keep some.

I've kept this group hardly 6 months yet, but so far they seem to be doing ok. I'm very happy if I succeed in keeping these snakes in good health long-term, and breeding seems like a very distant dream at this point.
I'll keep my fingers crossed that this male is suitable, and some day they'd actually breed...

One other question I would like to ask from those of you with a lot of experience with this species (haven't really found the answer elsewhere yet) is this; how long can an adult Wagler tolerate sub-par conditions before the first symptoms become visible?
Of course I'm not implying that any of you have had problems, but I'm sure you know how fragile this species really is. I have really done my best to provide my specimens with appropriate conditions and I'm monitoring them daily.

Thank you again for your time and help.

Hey Christian
I have kept them for 3 years maximum. They do really well and suddenly start regurgitating after about 3 years! Eventually they keep nothing down even small fuzzies are regurgitated after a couple of days! Their feces still look fine and swabs sent to the lab reveal nothing out of the ordinary. I thought it was humidity but they always shed in one piece right up to the end. I have tried everything with them whether I treat them for parasites or not they all die! I had babies born from wc parents and tried keeping them under different conditions and they all died from respiratory problems! Maybe that is the difference between cb and wc with this species! I have one female now from the Philippines eating very well! Had her about a year now! Will see what happens! I really hope you have luck with yours so I can find out what I am doing wrong! I had the same problem with Daboia Russelli Sublimitus from Indo! They did the same thing after about 2 years so I would really like to know what I am doing wrong!
Good luck with them!
Cheers
Gavin

Hi Christian,
Sorry for my stupid question, but are you absolutely sure that it is a male? I've never see a wagleri-male from sumatra with blue stripes. And the bodyshape is nearly by a female too, isn't it?
But I like to learn Wink

chris

I wonder the same thing.. At my knowledge usually the Sumatran males are green with white/red spots (as most of the T. wagleri male's). Some male's from examp. Sulawesi shows this kind of colouration but also they are only white or blue spots not perhaps stripes. Someone with more info can correct me if I'm wrong.
It's kinda interesting thing.. Can you probe the snake Christian?

There is some nice articles about the whole T. wagleri-complex which might help you.
A new species of Temple Pitviper (Tropidolaemus Wagler, 1830) from Sulawesi, Indonesia
U. Kuch, A. Gumprecht & C. Melaun
Revision of the Tropidolaemus wagleri-complex. Definition of included taxa and redescription of Tropidolaemus wagleri
G. Vogel, P. David, M. Lutz, J. Van Roojien & N. Vidal

Sami

Thank you everyone for the comments. I have to check out those articles.

My first and foremost concern was to let these snakes settle to their new home, and worry about the locality/sex issue later. And I had faith in the seller's claim that these were all Sumatran.
This green one is roughly 30cm long and as thick as my finger.

So, no stupid question there, Christoph; as I read your comment, I decided it's time to probe the 'male', just to be sure of that, if nothing else.
And damn it, it's a female! Damn, damn, damn... Evil or Very Mad

Now I need to find a real Sumatran male in the near future.

Hehehe, everytime there is a Tropidolaemus thread - there are more questions than answers at the end.

In my opinion - one identification factor for a male was a solid belly without spots and the females has spots. (for my Sulawesi T. subannulatus seems it correct)

Do you know the age of this snake?

Heh, I suppose so... Smile

As usual, I was super careful probing this specimen, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get deeper than maybe two scales...
Maybe I need to have another go at that in the future, should it grow more and make the probing tiny bit easier.

The solid belly was one of the things I thought might lean towards a male. Not sure how relevant this is, but it also seems to me that this little one has faster digestion.
I don't know what to think anymore...

Unfortunately I have no clue about the age of this specimen, I'm sorry.

Christian Moisander wrote:: So, no stupid question there, Christoph; as I read your comment, I decided it's time to probe the 'male', just to be sure of that, if nothing else.
And damn it, it's a female! Damn, damn, damn...

I'm sorry to hear about that. But I did it I almost thought. I would say that it is an sulawesi-female...

You know what I´m trying to say. One safe fact is the sexual diphormism in case of the size. So if they all have the same age...

I´m not believe in a Sulawesi female, because your snake seems to be not very big if you compare it with your decoration. And small Sulawesi females are born with red stripes that turns later into blue when they are older than one year old. And for a female in the age of one year and older it is to small.
And the post ocular stripe would have turned into blue too.

Time will tell is it a male or female.. But still it looks like a subadult female to me.
Hope you find couple of male's to you're collection if it turns out to be male.

BTW. Do you guys know has there been any reasent research on T. subannulatus-complex? I mean all the morphs which have been named in various places.. Are these just "morph", morphs (debending of the distribution) or perhaps subspecies.
These are the ones I mean: subannulatus morph, immaculatus morph and celebensis morph.

Perhaps Mario could enlighten us?

Sami

Jörg Porstmann wrote:: You know what I´m trying to say. One safe fact is the sexual diphormism in case of the size. So if they all have the same age...

I´m not believe in a Sulawesi female, because your snake seems to be not very big if you compare it with your decoration. And small Sulawesi females are born with red stripes that turns later into blue when they are older than one year old. And for a female in the age of one year and older it is to small.
And the post ocular stripe would have turned into blue too.

So, i retire my statement Wink

But wich locality (females) has a brown post ocular stripe and blue stripes at the back as a juvenile?

To complete it
A young T. subannulatus / Sulawesi female after her first feeding.
ID confirmation / help Fe_110

A young male from Sulawesi too
ID confirmation / help M_110

I saw a photo of an adult male from Sulawesi that looked like your uncertain male. Not sure, but I would vote Sulawesi (subannulatus) male.

Gavin, your experiences sound just like mine. After 3 years, they start to regurgitate and then die soon after. I would like to know if anyone else knows why this might be. My suspicion is that humidity was not high enough, which caused a gradual decline in health until they hit the point of no return, but I'm not sure. If anyone has had great success with Tropidolaemus, please reply to my other post Wink

Hi Christian,
I´m nearly sure that it is a subadult female T.subannulatus from Sulawesi.Have a look to my older photos here in the forum.I had same colored animals with certain lokality-north Sulawesi.The problem of imported T.wagleri and T.subannulatus is that they are hunted everywhere all around Malaisia-Indonesia and than colected and stored by dealers at one place all together before shipping to Europe or USA so you never know what is their origin......
Tomas

Thanks again guys for contributing your thoughts on this, very interestig reading.
With my extremely limited experience and knowledge regarding this species, I really can't take a side on this one yet.

Jörg's post with pictures was awesome, great examples and look nothing like mine at this point. However, if Tomas has north Sulawesi specimens that look like mine, well... that's a bit confusing.
Maybe I just have to wait and see if it grows and/or changes much.

I would also like to hear some thoughts on why the three-year-mark seems so gloomy for this species.

I don´t know why, but I would vote for a male too.
One evidence could be the solid belly. All my males have solid bellies without spots. Even I have to say I have another "Version of wagleri".

I hope Mario will find the time to watch this thread and can tell us what it is.

A bit offtopic but a serious question:

Is there a reasonable different behaviour (temperament, aggressiveness, etc.) between males and females in snakes too?

Except the adult size (males looks like the babies of the females :-) ) males has much more agility. My female never moved away from her favorite branch since 2 years.
In the night you can see my male strolling around.

Do male T. subannualtus from Sulawesi ever get the blue banding as seen in females, or do they retain the brown banding as in juveniles.

Most of the males that I have seen were brown banded, but I have seen photos of "supposedly" blue banded males. Just curious to know if maybe old males may eventually get blue bands?

Hi Christian...

i would say, based on my small experiences with tropidolaemus, the Animal on the first two pictures is an Tropidolaemus subannulatus female.

sorry to tell you, but it seem to me like you got two different species here...
i cant tell you more at this time as the whole Revision of Tropidolaemus is still ongoing. after publishing part I, we are still in need to explain the other mysteries.....

cheers
Mario

Again, I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to contribute their thoughts and experiences in educating me further on this topic. I truly appreciate that.

But I'm not done with you yet! Laughing

Thank you for the input, Mario. Your statement would support my probing result, as the probe only went about two scales deep. By the way, I'm really interested in the whole revision you mentioned.
Now I have an extra question for all of you, in case you'd be interested in continuing this thread...

This is an individual which arrived in the same shipment as my 'Mystery Green' in the first post. My very good friend Stefan Thomson took it under his wing (we assumed this to be a 2nd male), along with a Sumatran female.

In about 6 months time, this specimen has been housed with the said Sumatran female, and in that short time this specimen hasn't shown any considerable interest in the female.

Last weekend we decided to set these two green snakes side by side, and take a look at them with fresh eyes, so to speak.
There were obvious differences;

- While they were quite similar in size, this one is dark green
- This one has quite evenly distributed black dots on the sides of the ventral scales, every three scales or so
- The tail is thicker at the base
- The tail is longer

I believe it's a male, but again the question is; which species and locality is he... scratch

Stefan was kind enough to trust this snake on a loan to me, so thanks for that buddy.
I placed this assumed male into a large-ish terrarium with the T. subannulatus female and a young adult Sumatran wagleri female. Should all go well, he might show interest in either one. Or not...
Hopefully none of these three will get stressed by the presence of each other.

Nice snake Christian, hope you see some action.
I'll bet it's hard to tell the locality or sp. because the male's look so similar.. but hope someone has more knowledge and helps you with this one.

Did you manipulate any climate changes? wet-dry season, heavy rainfalls etc. Also changes in barometric pressure has been reported to stimulate breeding.
So do you keep more than one snake in the same terrarium all the time? It's perhaps OK if the terrarium is big enough but I would still keep my eyes open because they can be quite aggressive towards each other.

Crossbreeding different sp. and localities isn't perhaps the best choise in this sp. but it's everyones personal opinion. And who knows the babies might endup with some extra nice colours etc..

BTW. Perhaps you should find a more liable exporter Very Happy

lol

Inform us how it goes.
Sami

» Confirmation of sepecies please!