Black Dragon and High Yellow X Black Dragon clutches hatched at Vital Exotics!

[Vital Exotics]

We had some more really cool stuff going on lately here at Vital Exotics! Last week we hatched out the first USA CBB Black Dragon! The breeding was a male pure Black Dragon bred to a female pure Black Dragon. The small clutch was nested very well, but only one egg was fertilized and made the 7 month incubation process. I have been fortunate enough to have 2 other pure Black Dragon clutches laid recently, so watch for more Black Dragons to hatch this October & November.


This one is so amazing!














We also hatched out a clutch from a CBB “Reptile Guru Line” High Yellow male bred to a female pure Black Dragon! The expectations for the results of this clutch have been very anticipated across the world, as no one has ever documented this breeding in captivity before, and below you can see the results….Some amazing looking hatchlings that should prove out based on this and other data and information to be 100% Het Black Dragon! I will obviously continue working with these offspring to prove this out as soon as possible.














Here is a some info on the Black Dragons and how the Black gene seems to work:


The V.s komaini (Black Dragon) is no longer recognized as a subspecies of Varanus salvator, as yrs ago it was re-classified as a melanistic version of V. salvator macromaculatus. It has been discovered that the melanistic "komaini" animals apparently live alongside normal looking V. salvator macromaculatus where they are found. This also supports Koch et al.'s (2007) findings that "komaini" is an invalid taxon, and should be grouped together with V. salvator macromaculatus. This is also supported by noting that if the “Black” color trait or mutation was a 'locale' or a subspecies, you would see a blending of phenotypic traits, like what we see in the High Yellow V. s marmoratus X V. s macromaculatus “Reptile Guru High Yellow” crosses and similar crosses of different proven locality traits in Salvators and other reptiles.


We do know that breeding Black Dragon to Black Dragon makes all Black Dragons, which proves that the Black trait is genetically transferable, and if it were an intergrade/locality color mutation like some originally thought, we would have seen a "blending" of traits such as a Gray or really dark animal with some pattern but no bright yellow banding or ocelli (yellow spots). So as with many melanistic (black) reptiles, it is determined that, based on this information and other data, that the Black color mutation is a simple recessive trait.


With this information in mind….breeding 100% Het to 100% Het should produce Black Dragons for 25% of the clutch on average, the rest of the clutch will appear normal or High Yellow and have a 66% chance of carring the heterozygous form of the Black Dragon gene.

[John1982]

Very cool, congratulations. Took a bit of digging but I found an article I read a few years back - thought I'd share for any interested.

http://varanidae.org/Vol1_No1.pdf

[Annarose15]

Very cool!

[Archimedes]

Oh my gosh, so cool!! Congrats!!!

[Diamond Serpents]

The very first picture reminds me of a velociraptor in Jurassic park 1. It looks like the one right before the Australian hunter guy gets eaten in the jungle. Very cool, I seem to always be interested in these guys at shows but I know they are probably high maintenance.

[AdamL8]

I was definitely waiting to see this clutch. When I first read about the eggs being laid it didn't even occur to me that it might not be codom. Still a very cool clutch, especially since you've all but proved it to be simple recessive. Keep up the amazing work!

[Vital Exotics]

Thanks a lot everyone! The Salvators are my favorite species, I really enjoy learning about and working with them. I will keep you guys posted on how these guys look with growth and age.

[Nadamamasboy]

Gorgeous high yellow cross! Can you ship to Canada?

[Vital Exotics]

Nadamamasboy,

Thanks for the compliments.

Export to Canada takes special permits and costs, so export of a single animal is very time consuming, expensive and not cost effective for the customer. Exports are available on larger orders ($5000 USD or more) Thanks for the interest.

[Southern_Breeder]

Those are absolutely awesome!!!