Change in colour Vipera ammodytes

I was wondering if some people here have pics of their offspring of Vipera ammodytes ammodytes (especially from Montenegro), and also have pictures of how the animals turned out as adults. I ask this because when I see a litter of this species the young ones aren't as extreme in color as adults turn out to be. I'm curious if you can tell how which baby will look in a year or so.

Best regards,
Soleya.

Hi Soleya,

yes, this is in some ammodytes populations like you wrote. Very often observed in populations with snakes that shows colors like yello, red and brown. Constand colors you find mostly in populations where the major No. are gray. The southern populations starting from: Slovenia to Kroatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece have such ,,colofull´´ populations.
In nature, you can find in this areas populations that bears gray, brown, yelloish and reddish ones, and a clutch of offsprings shows a lot of colors. I don´t have had a WC ammodytes here, that has changed his color, but I´m sure it will make them, when there was color in the parents. We keep now in our vivarians a lot of very very nice snakes, and some people cross specialy only the most beautiful with another. So, we make now a,, clean colorful bloodline´´ not realy natural, because in nature not only the most redish male will copulate with the most red female! So in my opinion this phanomen will be much more dominat in captive care than in nature. Thats the human impact factor.

I breed and has breeded a lot of them. And you are absolutly right, youngsters change there color, sometimes only onece, but I have had a female that was born in yello-green color, after one year the color was olive, than it becomes more dark olive to brown olive. In age of more than 2 years it was more yello and now it looks like mostard colored. The offsprings from this female are mostly orange and yello, the breeding male is still the same a red one. I got my ones as a gift from a friend, he sell 12 offsprings from a clutch of 14 (7,7) babys. He want to give them to me as a gift, so I say to him: ,,Sell what you can sell for good money, after this I will try the last ones that will not sold´´ This couple was very normal in color, but after two years.... wohw! Suprise suprise!!
I say , a clutch of ,,Skutari ammoydtes´´ is like a bag of HARIBO rubber bears.

But back to your question. Normaly the offsprings will make there way to grow up and will change there color in the direction you will sugest, but not for sure! So, yelloish babys can be yello or not and so on! Nothing is for sure

Hello Soleya,

like Peter wrote, V. ammodytes can change their color through their lives. The more colorful they are, the more change of color they usually have during the first 2-3 years of their lives. This does not depend on the location where they come from but in Montenegro you have the highest amount of colorful specimens within some populations. If you have much experience in breeding and raising this species you can tell in most of the babies what color they will have later. But though I have been breeding V. ammod. from Montenegro for over 40 years now, I still get surprised sometimes because some of these animals get colors far away from what I would have expected - things like this keep life interesting.

Underneath are 2 photos of one litter of Vipera ammodytes ammodytes from Montenegro, coming from a yellow father (his parents were both red) and a red mother. One was taken at their day of birth, the second one after 10 months.
They are 14 months old now and have continued to change their colors. M1 is yellow with orange sides now, he will be bright yellow later, probably like his father (third photo) but with orange sides. Most of these babies will be orange or red later.








I hope this answers your question at least in parts,
Rainer

Nothing to add to what Dr. Rainer and Peter have write here. I will just add another photo to illustrate this point. Locality of ammodytes in the photo is central Croatia.

And this is the same male taken this spring in 2012.

Thanks everybody for the answers and pictures. They are real color bombs and it's really cool to see how much they can change in color.

I already looked trough the Vipera topics, and also have read that the nice red animals we have in captivity doesn't occur much in the wild. So I understand what you mean with the influence of us keepers on the color of the animals.

Thanks again, your answers have been really helpful !