new pair of 05 house snakes

[dr del]

Hi jjspirko,


Could you tell me why they are called green/olive? I just spent 15 minutes turning a bemused housesnake around under a light trying to detect any colour that wasn't a shade of brown

I've never heard of a cinnamon morph of these (we're a little behind in many ways in the uk) is there anywhere online I could see pictures of the various colours/morphs?


dr del

[jjspirko]

Dr Del,

Might be my mistake there based on how the pics look. They look like they are getting toward the "olive/green" phase to me. Brown and Green are kind of subjective I guess when it comes to Lamprophoris.

"Browns" are generaly darker then "greens" but "greens" are not green like most people would call something green just tending in the spectrum toward the green end.

Make any sense?

It gets worse because as I said this is also referred to as "olive phase" which I think is more accurate. Now watch as I make this all really bad

There is what you have a Lamprophis Fuliginosus of the "olive phase" which has the common name of "brown house snake"

There there is an olive phase of Lamprophis inornatus which has the common name of "black house snake" though it is seldom black and it is also commonly called you guessed it the olive house snake.

Worse then there is the true olive house snake, Lamprophis olivaceus which is called also the olive house snake.

All are beautiful and non of them interbreed causing lots of confusion.

Anyway if you called yours brown you would be correct to do so. But if you look at your own picture of the second snake and you look at the hues of the luminesence on the edges where the color gets lighter you can see what people mean when they call this an "olive phase".

Kind of like a "green hognose snake" they are not really green just the shade of primary color has green hues. Its all semantics anyway,

[jjspirko]

Perhaps this will help. The pic below is a striped cape house snake (L. Capensis) different species from your pair.

But if you look at her brown color that is closer to a true "brown phase" house snakes brown color. So like if you compare the color of your snakes to that darker brown it might be a bit more clear why some refer to animals like yours as greens or olives.

Hope that helps,

[tropheusfreak]

The snakes in this post are my snakes. I checked out Don's site and I think I'm going to order his pair tonight. He is aking 100 shipped for the pair. I'm waiting on an email back to see if they are still available.

[jjspirko]

Hey if you buy that pair from Don make sure he knows I referred ya. Don's a good guy I picked up 9 animals from him this summer all were stellar including that striped girl above.

[tropheusfreak]

I will

[jjspirko]

Hey on Don's Snakes just to be clear he has

A pair with a red female and a normal male both L. Fuliginosus

and

A single adult male patternless "olive/green" phase also a L. Fuliginosus

You may want to see if he might swing a deal on the trio to save on shipping, of couse then you will have 3.2 and be unballanced but that seems like a perfect excuse to buy some more females in the future, ya got to always think ahead,

[dr del]

Whoops!!

Sorry to both jjspirko and tropheusfreak for the confusion over the ownership of the pictured snakes entirely unintentional I assure you.

I still havn't bought a digital camera - though am hoping to borrow a friends old svga one to play with.

I see what you mean on the colour of the housesnakes though - mine is definately a lighter shade of brown and the pattern is nowhere near as visible as on the cape house snake.

Still trying to track down pictures of the "cinamon" morph that might be thrown by tropheusfreak's new babies. I like the fact that there are so many species and such variation within them that there is always something new to see.



dr del

[jjspirko]

One great way to get over the confusion with House Snakes is to think of them sort of like "rat snakes".

So like there is a orange phase of a texas rat snake and there are very orange phases of corn snakes (which are also rat snakes of course) so when you think of house snake more like rat snake it helps clear the confusion a lot!

There are many types or rat snakes and many phases of each, they are all part of the genus Elaphe some interbreed and some don't and there are many phases of each species with in the Genus.

Same with House Snakes they are for lack of a better word the African equivlent of the rat snake.