Is this mature adult male or female?

[Brainmurk]

I'm having some trouble determining the sex of a 5-7 year old ball that I recently rescued from a neglect situation. My experience with snakes begins and ends at Corn Snakes, which you can almost always easily pop to get a gender. This snake is bigger than one I've ever worked with - so... coming to the experts!

"She" is 132cm long and weighs 1522g. Inspecting the cloaca shows... some damage. Somehow she seems to be missing one of her spurs. When I went to probe, there was a wad of unshed skin stuck up inside the area, which came right out with just a little encouragement. Upon probing, the depth of the probe is 1.7cm - the depth of three of her belly scales, for image comparison. The length of her spurs are .5cm. You can see in this image of her missing spur an idea of her size.




bonus: forgive the hastily marked measurement, I just made a little comparison thing to hold up to show the depth the probe went, for reference.



So! Opinions? Male or female?

[Kokorobosoi]

If it probed to three scales I say female.

[Brainmurk]

Secondguessing myself, I found something smaller to probe her with and tried again. This time, I've got a measurement of nearly 5cm. I made a little short video clip to help illustrate this depth. Further trying to "pop" her got me the tiniest little nubs to come out (didn't get that on video, sorry).

[Kokorobosoi]

Wait...you aren't actually using probes?

I wouldn't use something different, especially if you aren't completely a pro at it.

I go by how many scales deep it went, not by centimeter, as a larger snake has larger scales, so its not as accurate without being there.
Three and below is female. Four, and I ask hubby to check it. Five to 7 is male. I have never personally seen a snake go past 7.


As always, your mileage may vary, but this seems to be a good rule of thumb.

[Kokorobosoi]

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...ighlight=probe

Couldnt edit, but pulled this up for you...I cant watch it since I have no sound on this computer, but it should answer any questions.