What's happening inside?

Maybe this is common knowledge, if so sorry for the extraeneous post, but I'm not sure what goes on internally for females. In mammals there's ovulation, then egg meets sperm, forms an embyro, and eventually out comes a baby or a puppy or whatever. But somehow I feel like this is somehow different in reptiles? When the breeding timeline talks about ovulation in the female is that before any genetic material is exchanged? Or is that her forming the eggs that are going to be laid? This would probably seem more intuitive if I'd been through it before, but as a total newb I'd apprecite it if anyone could someone could explain what goes on internally once boy meets girl.

Thanks!

That's the question I had with the timeline are the follicals and ovullation going to happen bred or not and just reabsorbed if not bred or is ovulation a result of breeding. I've been told that snakes can retain sperm for some time and then fertilization can occur much later after breeding.

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It is a good question the problem I have is the best book I own has devoted 65 pages to the answer. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on that topic will be able to paraphrase for you.

If you are truly interested in such things the VPI book 'Ball Pythons' is amazing.

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Originally Posted by kitedemon

It is a good question the problem I have is the best book I own has devoted 65 pages to the answer. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on that topic will be able to paraphrase for you.

If you are truly interested in such things the VPI book 'Ball Pythons' is amazing.

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I'm going to have to get a copy of that book, thanks!

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...reeding-charts

Hope it helps, just a note about your ovulation question, that moment is when the eggs are beign moved down to the oviduct to meet the sperm and become fertilize.

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Originally Posted by rafacacho

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...reeding-charts

Hope it helps, just a note about your ovulation question, that moment is when the eggs are beign moved down to the oviduct to meet the sperm and become fertilize.

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So the eggs are already formed before fertilization? I guess that makes sense, it's just hard for me to picture. How long can they store the sperm and keep it viable? It seems like they would wait until after ovulating to breed.

They definitely DO store the sperm, and at least some of it definitely is viable: several breeders here have had mixed-sire clutches, where one or more babies were sired by a male the that female hadn't seen for several months prior to ovulation. (I want to say "up to six months", but I'm not 100% sure about that.)

Maybe that's a cold-blooded thing. The internal temps are low enough that the sperm just don't die quickly.

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Originally Posted by Badgemash

So the eggs are already formed before fertilization? I guess that makes sense, it's just hard for me to picture. How long can they store the sperm and keep it viable? It seems like they would wait until after ovulating to breed.

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All female animals technically form eggs before fertilization, because its a sperm that fertilizes an egg. Thats why you can get infertile eggs, they just never met the right sperm! All those poor eggs at the supermarket.....:P