#python breitensteini

[hound-bound]

Had Bakar out for some sun today! First time this year it's been warm enough, I think he enjoyed himself 🧡

I love how his salmon blushing is still so vibrant!

[herpsandbirds]

Borneo Short-tailed Python (Python breitensteini), family Pythonidae, endemic to Borneo

photograph by Thomas Ryan Harper

[sohnen]

New son!ヾ(*´∀ ˋ*)ﾉ Fenris... He is hissing like him at the starts but then chill (灬ºωº灬) P. Breitensteini ultrabreit Vpi bloodline

[tribalxink]

Ruby❤️ our Borneo blood python

[thlpp]

Hey, I’m getting a borneo short tailed python soon and I’ve read/watched a LOT about them but wanted a more personal opinion on care + general tips on them. Could you do that for me, if you know about them?

I love them. I posted quite a bit about their general care and what I’ve observed with Porthos (I know he’s a brongersmai not a breitensteini, but they’re similar enough in husbandry, I think).

Here’s one

Here’s another

I suggest you visit bloodpythons.com and read their extensive articles covering husbandry and all other kinds of things you might want to know

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

Nerding Out Over Masting, or Why Unusual Plant Reproduction Excites Animal Ecologists

As for many people, every pandemic month that passes marks another month since I’ve been able to travel. I realized recently that this is the longest time I’ve gone without getting on a plane since about the 5th grade (my parents divorced and lived in different states), and the longest I’ve gone without leaving the country since 2004. One reason I became an ecologist is because the work afforded me the opportunity to travel as part of my job, and that aspect is one of the main things I love about my work. For many tropical ecologists, the pandemic has marked a year of lost opportunities to travel to our field sites. Though my ongoing projects will survive this missed year of data, I miss the forest, and have spent many hours remembering all the things that made me fall in love with tropical field work in the first place.

Figure 1. Seedlings at Danum Valley, Sabah, Malaysia, October 2019.

One of my favorite forest phenomena is masting. Trees in the family Dipterocarpacae dominate SE Asian rainforests. These are the world’s tallest rainforest trees, reaching more than 90 meters in height, and they reproduce by masting, which are irregular fruiting events. In northern Borneo, there is no set wet or dry season; rain falls year-round but there are sporadic dry periods that vary from year to year. Thus, there is no regular spring/flowering season like we have here in the US. Instead, the Dipterocarps reproduce in masting events, usually following strong droughts. The reason animal ecologists get excited by these masting events is because during these periods the forest seems to explode with life. The first time I went to one of my field sites (Danum Valley) was during a masting event (2010), and I had no idea how rare and special it was. I thought that it was normal to see two clouded leopards eating a mouse deer, or to see orangutans pretty much every day, or to have elephants tip over your car while you’re out surveying frogs (true story!). In the following years, I realized how incredible it was to have been there at that time. I was a little sad that my chances of seeing another masting event were low, but I got lucky again in 2019 when I spent a month at Danum during its most recent masting year.

As a herpetologist, I admit that I don’t fully appreciate all of the botanical intricacies of masting. But the most visually noticeable thing about a masting event is that it makes the forest look as though someone has planted thousands and thousands of seedlings all over the forest floor. This is incredibly striking because much of the forest doesn’t normally have a lot of undergrowth, but rather widely spaced giant trees. It would be like seeing the redwood forest with seedlings blanketing the forest floor. I have a ridiculous number of pictures of both the forest floor and individual seeds and seedlings in an enormous variety of shape and size, and will gladly bore anyone willing to look at them.

Figure 2. Borneo short python (Python breitensteini), caecilian (Ichthyophis sp.), and palm civet (Paradoxurus philippensis). 

As I mentioned above, masting events also bring out heaps of animals that I don’t often otherwise see. In my first week, while setting up an introduction to electro-fishing for my students, we saw an orangutan about 30 meters away. He then came down to the forest floor, crossed the stream a little ways up from us, and walked off into the forest on the other side. Later that afternoon as I was setting up the exercise on a different stream, a lizard known as a water monitor (Varanus) was swimming downstream toward us, got spooked up onto shore by our presence, and ran right into the mouth of a concealed king cobra--!! While we couldn’t see the cobra’s full body, we clearly saw its unmistakable head scales as it was pulling the Varanus back into its hiding spot, and heard the incredible growl that cobras let out when they don’t want to be bothered. The rest of the month saw numerous species of snakes, a giant softshell turtle, my 4th ever caecilian (a limbless amphibian), mom and baby civets (a small carnivorous mammal), and in keeping with the field session’s mission, awesome frog data collected together with my students. While these animals are always present in the forest, masting events seem to bring them out in force, making all of them much easier to see.

As we start 2021, I am cautiously hoping that this year will see us all getting vaccinated, making travel safe once again. I hope to return to Borneo for more incredible encounters alongside my regular data collection, to better understand the incredible forest that hooked me into tropical field ecology in the first place.

Jennifer Sheridan is Assistant Curator in the Section of Amphibians and Reptiles at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

[reptiliaherps]

Sexism and elitism in the reptile industry.

WARNING: LONG TEXT POST I know we have talked about this a number of times before, but I wanted to touch base on this again using my experience from last weekends expo now that I have some time to sit down and talk about it. I had the privilege of taking with me my friend Scott, who knows little to nothing about reptiles, and my friend Rie who is a bird person. The expo actually went swimmingly for the most part, until I stopped at the booth belonging to Vince Russo. He may be more recognizable to people as the author of The Complete Boa. From what I have heard, a lot of people have had some very enjoyable experiences with this guy-- healthy animals delivered to them, comprehensive answers given when asked questions, etc. My personal experience with him really wasn't as nice, but it wasn't inherently terrible, and I'll get into that in a moment. I had been eyeballing his table for a while because I was tentatively considering picking something up and I had heard through the grapevine that he was starting to really actually get into Sumatran Short Tails and I wanted to take a peek at what he might have. What I noticed first was a pair of girls approaching him, one asking something about one of the boas, saying that it looked similar to another morph she had seen. He straightened up, and with the most condescending tone I had heard in a while, not only corrected her but proceeded to talk to her like she was a child. Then I approached. My friend Scott was closer to Vince and was asking questions and our friendly author of The Complete Boa spoke to him very enthusiastically. He answered all of his questions professionally and pleasantly. I was standing a few feet away with Rie because I spotted a pair of SSTPs. One muddy male with yellow casting and a female with several kinks in her lower spine. They are labeled "BLACK BLOODS." I say to Rie, "this is actually something to pay attention to because it can confuse people. There's no such thing as a black blood, they're Sumatran short tails. Same as the term Borneo bloods, Python breitensteini is a different species than brongersmai." Vince Russo cuts in and very loudly states "Borneo is Python BREITENSTEINI." To which I very curtly said, "Yeah, I'm aware, I just said that, but thanks." He proceeded to tell me about how I should buy his P. curtus, but to keep in mind that he is only selling lone males. "I'm not selling any lone females" he says as I look down at the female, who has kinks down 1/3 of her body and despite that is listed at the same price as the male. I politely told him that I wasn't really sure if I wanted to buy anything at all and he cut me off and said even louder "you won't find them anywhere else. I'm the only guy I know who breeds them. You need to get them while you can." Me, being the asshole that I am, told him that I can name ten off of the top of my head and he claimed he's never heard of any of them, including Kara Norris which I find very hard to believe. This really does not seem like that big of a deal and in reality it's not-- I had very pleasant conversations with Mike Schultz of Outback Reptiles and his girlfriend who was so, so happy to introduce people to blood pythons and discuss the difference in temperament from CH, WC and CBB offspring. I bring this up because I'm seeing a LOT of new younger women start to become interested in the hobby and micro-aggressive behavior like what Vincent Russo displayed is so prevalent in the community. Had I not known better, if I were more ignorant and not as immersed in the hobby, I might have listened to Russo and bought that cheap, low quality Sumatran short tail without looking into other options, etc. I talk about this every single time I go to an expo because it's so important for women, girls, and just generally people who are new to the hobby to be aware and take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Some people will flat out lie to you, others will belittle you. I have had the experience of a breeder blatantly disallowing me from holding a large constrictor because he didn't think I could "handle it." I've had vendors try to outright slander the name of other breeders in good standing with the community in an effort to complete a sale. I watched one young man end up buying what was very obviously an unhealthy bearded dragon that was showing a number of MBD symptoms to be told that "that's normal" and "sometimes they just look like that." Please, please, please be aware of what is going on around you. Do not tolerate being treated like a child by vendors if you have questions. I will be honest and say that most of my interactions with vendors at expos are great and I meet a lot of awesome people. But the people who AREN'T great, the people who will lie or bring unhealthy animals to expos or treat people with no respect are the people that we need to weed the hell out of the hobby. End rant.

[keberyna]

Some of my Borneo Short-Tail Pythons.

[snakeoftheday]

Todays Snake Is:

The Borneo Short-tailed Python (Python breitensteini) is a constrictor found only on the island of Borneo. This thick-bodied snake is often found in flood plains, swamps, and irrigated farmlands in the wild. A number of different varieties, such as the Super Stripe shown above, have been bred in captivity.  

(x)

[fattyfatpythonsforever]

Alex Schorgendorfer

ug. 

[thlpp]

metalrockmusix replied to your photoset “Very photogenic. #nofilter”

pure blood? so pretty

Thank you! I love him to pieces, my pudgy snek man.

I believe him to be 100% blood python (p. brongersmai) -- I have compared his facial scalation to the diagrams for differentiating pp. curtus, breitensteini, and brongersmai, and he seems to be spot-on for brong.

I bought him from a local reptile business, as a pet. I don’t intend to breed any of my snakes, so lack of exact lineage information is fine by me.

[keberyna]

Some updated shots of my fatty babies!

[solid-snakes]

The fat one. She's been building up for a poop for a while now, and as you can see, she's about to blow. 

Frankly, I'm kind of frightened.

[fattyfatpythonsforever]

this this is so ridiculous. i want one. 

Matt Minetola

[sludgeberry]

My boys, Caligari and Karloff, with the same pumpkins. 

i really want to take pictures of them together, it’d be adorable.

[pansneksual]

Borneo Short-tail Python (Python breitensteini) from The Blood Cell