First Blacktail Cribo

[Skiploder]

No disrespect taken what so ever Skiploder, nearly every post from you is an opportunity to learn. As best as I can tell John's animals have no locality information and his pairings are based purely on like appearances (color, mottling etc.) Perhaps I should email him as this is just speculation on my part, however I've seen no indications towards the contrary. Personally this is ok with me, his stock is genetically varied and his animals are healthy. Where I do have a problem with this type of breeding is when it leads to generation after generation of inbreeding animals in pursuit of a goal which eventually compromises there genetic variability and health of the animals.

At this point all of my animals are pets. Each species that I have I keep because something about them captivates me, whether it be their appearance, behavior, specific husbandry needs, or some other factor. Eventually when this does lead me into breeding the animals which fascinate me I would like to be able breed true locality animals.

Do you know of any sources for locality BTs Skip?

9 years ago I imported 3 animals from the vicinity of La Gomera, Guatemala. 1 male and two females. According to the collector, all three animals were caught within 30 miles of each other. All had coal black tails.

The male (Mojo) sired a clutch with both females and those babies all had tails of varying colors as adults - from jet black to mahogany. I have been told by cribo "experts" that select grandbabies of those initial pairings could be consider unicolors - what a joke.

To answer your question - most stock available in the US is untraceable. Except for that trio, I could not tell you the localities of any of my other animals. If anyone says they can, make them show you their paperwork for proof.

The question I would have for all dry afficionados is this - if nature allows for a wide variance in tail colorations within localities, why are we striving for more predictable tail colorations? Well, if the answer is to make them more marketable then that answer sucks!

Most of the breeders today will freely admit that tail color variation exists in clutches - so why are we trying to change that? Why are we ASSuming that unicolors are better than blacktails which are better than browntails, when all are locality variations of the same damn snake?

Anyway, enjoy your new baby. He looks clean and healthy. Grown him slow, handle him frequently, keep that cage scrupulously clean and mind your temps this summer. I'm sure he'll bring you pleasure for many years to come.