Rhea's garters and the occasional other beast

[gregmonsta]

The feisty parietalis .... guarding the fort

[stonyloam]

here's a snapshot of my favourite group

Just found this post. Don't know how I missed it, Chloe looks fantastic, and big! That flame is soooooo cute. Happy New Year!

[drache]

Chloe is no longer a small snake - she's one of my big ladies
happy new year to you also, Terry

here's a couple of Jackson and Don




I know - Jackson looks big for a male. I've had him probed a couple of times and he's definitely a male. So no - even though Don (the vagrans) tries mating with him seasonally, there's no chance of hybrids here

incidentally Jackson is as large as my concinnus female, and the same was true for another concinnus male I used to have. Is that normal for them?
I also have a very large marcianus male - wondering the same

[gregmonsta]

Xerxes - my concinnus - is by far the longest of my males and was easily the same length as Xena (she was definately girthier though).
Sangria (Xena's replacement) is taking her time growing up. I'm not sure if she'll match up to Xena's standard.
Another thing I've seen as a trend from my experience so far is that concinnus girls seem to have relatively long tails compared to other girls.

[mustang]

hey - I got them from Scott, not some street vendor on Canal Street in Chinatown

HEY THATS WHERE I GET MY PINKY's FROM
sorry had to do it.and it was a mental battle to choose between pinkys or MAGIC cards

[ConcinusMan]

Xerxes - my concinnus - is by far the longest of my males and was easily the same length as Xena (she was definately girthier though).
Sangria (Xena's replacement) is taking her time growing up. I'm not sure if she'll match up to Xena's standard.
Another thing I've seen as a trend from my experience so far is that concinnus girls seem to have relatively long tails compared to other girls.

I suppose that would depend on what species the "other girls" are. Adult female concinnus' definitely have the girth when compared to males. Males get nearly as long at max size but they're almost always noticeably thinner than a female of the same length. males tend to have narrower heads too.

I don't see any reason to probe a concinnus, I mean, isn't it obviously male just by looking at it? If it isn't obvious, and the other snake tries to mate with him... makes me suspicious.

Concinnus male: (cannot possibly be mistaken for female)

[drache]

the reason I got him probed is because the other male keeps wanting to mate with him and I doubted my visual ID. also - he has evinced no interest in the female, so I thought it would be prudent to get some definite answer before I put him back into the boys' tank (this was spring/early summer)
I've got no problems visually sexing my other thamnophis

[gregmonsta]

I don't see any reason to probe a concinnus, I mean, isn't it obviously male just by looking at it? If it isn't obvious, and the other snake tries to mate with him... makes me suspicious.

Concinnus male: (cannot possibly be mistaken for female)

Considering that males can choose to emit female pheromones and the amount of attempted copulation that goes on in my male communal tank it doesn't make me suspicious at all. Slithers will have a go at anything that moves and they all have tried to court each other at some point or other.
The picture you posted is a very clean example of a male but my Florida blue male does not have a 'tell-tale' bulge. Neither of the concinnus females I've owned has shown a definate taper either. When I first got Xena and Xerxes, the only way to tell them apart was body size and personal markings. Deciding which was male and female just by the tail would have been a hard task for anyone (although nowadays Xerxes' manhoods are a lot more obvious).

[ConcinusMan]

Well I keep hearing about all kinds of weird stuff that I wouldn't call typical of them, like "concinnus only get about 2.5 feet" and "they have small litters"... "they are cannibalistic" It's curious that most of the weird stuff I hear is coming from European owners who's snakes are many generations CB, and possibly even inbred or of a small gene pool. I mean, I keep hearing things that are the polar opposite of my observations keeping wild concinnus' or CB here in the states, and then people assume these things are typical of them when nothing could be further from the truth. I'll just have to go ahead and take your word for it but in 25 years I've never seen a male of any species court another male. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, I've just never seen it and so I must assume it's very uncommon. Strangely enough, I have seen on just two occasions, proven females act like males, chin rubbing and following other females.

I read a lot of things about parietalis, including the males imitating females thing. Since that subspecies is studied so much, I see a tendency for people to apply this to other garter snakes where it doesn't necessarily apply. I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm just saying that there are a lot of things parietalis do that other garters do not do. I think that many of the things they do are an adaptation to the extreme cold winters where they live. It just doesn't get that cold in concinnus' range. You won't find them forming breeding balls and you won't see massive piles of them in the spring. The emerge later (when it's warmer) than ordinoides and disperse almost immediately.

I don't see a bulge in any of my male concinnus' either and when they are very young, the sexual dimorphism can be hard to spot in a few individuals but when they are adults 24 inches and up, the differences are obvious. Last summer, Redspot (Nate) probed a snake as male, that I kept. He swore it was male, I disagreed. That snake gave birth later.

Now don't take this wrong and assume that I don't believe these things are happening or that I feel that I'm absolutely right I'm just saying that these things people are telling me is news to me 'cause I've never seen it in many years of keeping many of them.

[drache]

I've got no particular experience with them, and my statements are limited to the few I've had in my care. for the most part they've not seemed significantly different from other T.sirtalis, but my parietalis male, for example, is tiny by comparison
this guy was gotten through trade for another male. since we're in Brooklyn, and there's not a lot of concinnus breeders around, I'm assuming he's most likely progeny of wc pair gotten at an expo
so no, I've got no clue what's normal for them. Maybe the Brooklyn air is affecting him
either way he's a lovely snake, and I'm totally fine with gender ambiguity