JCP or Coastal?

[TheKingInYellow]

I posted this pic below in a different topic, but I'm staring to wonder. This girl is about 7-8 months old now, and she is not yellowing up as much as I would have expected. She was sold as 100% JCP, but like most small breeders, who knows how good the parental stock is.

Anyhow, here is the pic:



Her head is out of focus, because she loves to race towards the camera when she sees it. If she is a coastal, or a mix, can I expect her to get bigger than 8 feet?

[Colin Vestrand]

the amount yellow depends completely on the lineage... there are a lot of brown jungles out there.
that said, some are just kinda late bloomers. i've seen yearlings that get sold as brown 'duds' that end up being screamers.

and just for the record, not all small scale breeders have bad stock..

[TheKingInYellow]

I didn't mean to imply that, sorry

[hawaiianice99]

Looks like a low yellow JCP, and i wouldnt expect her to get much larger than 6ft, some do get a bit bigger but on average in between 6-7ft.

[TheKingInYellow]

How can you tell the two apart? She looks like a lot of coastals that I have seen pics of.

Is it a pattern thing, a colour thing, or what?

[DavidG]

It really is just a guess. It's easier as an adult, but seeing a snake in person many people with experience can give an educated guess. From the pic this guy looks like a cross to me but there really is no way of telling 100%.

[Colin Vestrand]

it's much easier to tell if a coastal has jungle blood than to tell if a jungle has coastal blood... head pattern and labial markings are a lot different between the two.
there's something about the overall 'look' too that usually you can pick out... jungles, a lot of times, will have a different color black than coastals... but not all the time.

as far as size goes, if you feed your jungle conservatively once it gets a bit older, there's nothing to worry about.

here's one of mine from a clutch of 17 coastals that is currently looking like a jungle though... the black is the wrong color and the head says coastal all the way. my guess is that as an adult it won't look anything like a jungle.