how to tell carpets apart?

[Colin Vestrand]

a few recent threads have brought this up for me...

with the extreme variability in pattern, how can you tell, say, a young JCP from a young coastal or irian jaya?

btw, i have a coastal that is pastel yellow with jet black stripes... many people think its a jcp when they see it.

[daniel1983]

Classifying Austrailian pythons is tough since most have had various names over the years and some have even been labeled as the same species at times. You see this with both carpets and dwarf pythons. The best bet is to know the origins of your animal though the breeder. Hybridizing carpets seems to be done alot more frequently than most other pythons so sometimes you would have no idea what it actually is unless the breeder told you. Also, with the carpet morphs hitting the scene the distinction between some is becomeing even harder. An pure adult coastal looks nothing like a jungle....however, a jaguar sibling coastal can sometimes cause a mixup. A pure diamond looks different than both and is pretty obvious also. The situation is the same with childrens pythons and stimsons pythons....they pretty much look identical when young, so they have been mislabeled and interbreed over the years by unknowing people.

My advice would be to try to find as many "pure" carpet pictures as possible to compare to your snake and find out as much origin information as you can about your animal.


Here is an interesting read and a quick google search will get you tons more :
http://www.smuggled.com/auspyt4.htm

[Charlie Smith]

you almost can't...Morelia is a very varied group with consistancy of offspring markings being irregular, either having to do with survival or cross breeding but most especially in the US since they can't be exported anymore from Australia they have been knowingly and unknowingly interbred between species. Like daniel1983 has already clarified...unless you know for sure the lineage, wait until it grows up several years and call it what you see it to be or what you were told it was and that is what you believe it to be...other forums have brought up this very question with answers like varied and inconsistant even while trying to line breed for specific traits.

my 2 sense, good luck!

Charlie S.

[Colin Vestrand]

thanks guys... to clerify, i wasnt referring to my pythons. they're all 100% pure coastals. the one jag sib is the only one that anyone says looks like a jungle really... but it's parents (and the other jags) were actually purchased direct from norway from mr. engel himself.i'm a huge advocate of not interbreeding australian pythons... that's something i'm definitely all about. i don't care if your diamond jungle jaguar jaya carpet looks way sweet... bleh

anyway, i was just curious if there was any tell tale signs that were prominant when young.. such as a scale count or head shape or something along those lines.