X-Ray for Sexing????

[Slowcountry Balls]

Has anyone ever heard of using an x-ray image to determine the sex of a snake? Reproductive organs are soft tissue, so I don't think an x-ray would show the reproductive organs. I thought everting and probing were the standard ways to sex a snake. But just wanted to ask if anyone knows of using an x-ray image as a reliable way to determine the sex of the snake?

[Pythonfriend]

i think you only get the bones.

in humans, there are some differences in the bone structure between males and females. if the same is true for BPs, there may be a way that does not exist yet. meaning i dont know if anyone ever investigated differences between male and female BP skeletons to the point of pinning down a sex-determining difference in bone structure. and i dont think it has been attempted.

this question might be an interesting thesis for a ph.d. in biology. for a good ph.d. , you need to expand scientific knowledge into the unknown, but you cannot choose a question that overwhelms a single person.

the methods are popping and probing, apart from that, ultrasound is much more promising than x-ray. but i never heared about sex determination using ultrasound either.

[Krynn]

I've used ultrasound to measure the testes of smaller mammals, so I could see it being possible to find testes in a male python. At the very least you would probably have to wait until maturity though. Probing and popping are both a lot simpler.

[Slowcountry Balls]

I agree that this method sounds very unlikely to succeed. I would think that, like in humans, an ultrasound, MRI, or CT Scan would be needed to look at soft tissue. All imaging techniques seem rather expensive compared to everting (popping) and probing. Yesterday, someone told me about a veterinarian using an x-ray to determine the sex of a Ball Python. That didn't make sense, so I thought I would see if anyone else had heard of an x-ray being used to determine the sex of a Ball Python.