Will Liasis ever take off?

[Skiploder]

* Popular enough to be kept by more than a handful of die-hard fans.

I think you are underestimating the numbers of olives, macklott's, savus and fuscus out there.

While they do not enjoy the popularity of the more ubiquitous colubrids, they are out there in quantities that exceed a "handful".

* Enjoyed enough by the general herpkeeping public to be referred to as something other than "that brown/green snake"

I would look at it this way - they are enjoyed by a select and discriminating segment of the reptile hobby.

In general, they do not have the temperaments found with ball, corn and the more popular snake species. Temperament and manageable size have a great deal to do with popularity. Olives and fuscus don't fit the latter and liasis - in general - don't fit the former.

* Kept by enough people that there are more than two decent caresheets to be found on the entire Web

Care sheets are often not worth the space they take up. Gopher and pine snakes are very popular, as are antaresia pythons. Neither are represented by a plethora of care sheets.

* Kept frequently enough that the Liasis board on this and other forums doesn't sit dormant for months on end until somebody who has already posted dozens of pictures of their snakes posts them again (or posts discussion topics like this) just to try to generate some activity on the forum.

This is a ball python forum. Have you checked out the Aussie Snakes and Pythons site? Or the Morelia Pythons site? They are quite a bit more active with respect to liasis than this site.

All I'm saying is that with corns, kings, milks, balls, redtails, burms, etc. you seem to have an almost endless supply of color and pattern variations. Each one makes that morph the next "must have" version of an already popular snake. For something like a Macklott's python, there isn't even an albino form that I'm aware of, so it seems unlikely that they'll explode into popularity overnight like some other species have done in recent years.

It does seem unlikely indeed. I think you thoroughly answered your own question.

]Most Liasis also have a reputation that precedes them - almost every reference I can find about this genus before about 2002 focuses on how aggressive they are. That's turned around slightly in the past few years and now I at least see "they'll grow out of it." Of course, other snakes have this reputation too...look at GTPs for example. I keep these too, and it seems to me that most people who see mine bite me from time to time almost invariably lean towards "but they look so cool!" As a result of that, even green trees, which have less variation than most commonly kept snakes are
increasingly popular in captivity.

The reputation - in many respects - is deserved.

Oh - there are exceptional examples in any species - but on average, liasis can be a tad more pissy than snakes that enjoy a widespread popularity.

I think they're great, but I don't see this happening for the Liasis genus...

I think they are great too. I also don't see them reaching the popularity of lampropeltis, regius or even morelia and aspidites.