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Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
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by tigers9 on April 5, 2008
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How common, or not, are these vipers in private non AZA collections, and if people have them, how succesful is private sector breeding?
Z
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http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=89409
Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
posted by: Dan Boniface , Web Producer created: 4/5/2008 10:32:27 AM
Last updated: 4/5/2008 1:41:58 PM
VIEW SLIDESHOW
DENVER - The Denver Zoo is only one of three zoos in the U.S. that has adult Sumatran Pit Vipers.
Even more impressive is the fact that the Denver Zoo is the only zoo to be able to successfully breed this rare snake.
In the wild, these pit vipers live in the rainforests of Peninsular Malaysia. They are secretive and don't move much so it's hard to spot them to know exactly how many there are in the rainforest.
However, with their habitat disappearing, it's quite possible that their numbers are falling as well.
The Sumatran Pit Viper has very large fangs, especially for its size. This snake also has considerable amounts of venom stored in its glands. This pit vipers venom will tear apart body tissue, destroy blood cells and cause a lot of pain and swelling.
The baby vipers hatch with a full set of teeth and venom that isn't as potent as what you would find in an adult. The babies are very difficult to care for in zoos.
The Denver Zoo keepers will spend up to an hour feeding just one newborn pit viper. The Denver Zoo's most recent clutch consists of eight babies who are very finicky when it comes to eating, the males more so than the females.
This type of snake prefers frogs. The females easily adapt their taste buds to other things but the males hold out for frogs. Even so, the young males at the zoo are experimenting with new tastes, although reluctantly. Perhaps this is why males tend to be smaller than the females.
The Denver Zoo has already sent offspring from other clutches to other zoos. The plan is to continue to breed this snake here and then send some off to other institutions where other clutches can be produced.
The keepers at the Denver Zoo are learning as they go and using their experiences to help others facilities wanting to increase the population of the Sumatran Pit Viper.
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RE: Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
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by Cro on April 7, 2008
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Z, the Sumatran Pit Viper is one of the "Bamboo Vipers" that range over a huge part of SE Asia.
This group of snakes was at one time broken up into about 35 subspecies, however, the Genus Trimersurus
has undergone, and is still undergoing major revisions.
Because of these revisions, the subspecies that was called the Sumatran Pit Viper or Gumprecht's Green Pit Viper probably does not even exsist as a recognized sub-species anymore.
If this is the case, the snake that was bred at the Denver Zoo would be just a color morph of the bamboo vipers, and not all that special anymore, as bamboo vipers have been bred in captivity many times.
Someone like Dr.Wolfgang Wuster would probably be able to tell us if the Sumatran Pit Viper is still valid or not, as he has worked on a lot of the revisions of the Trimersurus group.
Hope this helps.
Best Regards JohnZ
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RE: Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
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by TexasTreeViper on April 7, 2008
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I have seen the former T. gumprechti, now Viridovipera gumprecht,in books referred to by the common name Sumatran pit viper but I believe the species this story is referring to is actually Parias sumatranus, formally T.sumatranus.
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RE: Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
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by Cro on April 7, 2008
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Too bad the news article did not list the Scientific Name of the snake they bred.
The problem with common names is there are several snakes in that area that could be commonly called a Sumatran Pit Viper.
In looking into this, the hundreds of snakes that used to all be Trimeresurus have now been split up within the Subfamily Crotalinae and that Subfamily has been split into some 27 Genus, several of which these snakes have been placed into.
All I can say for sure is that I would hate to be a Taxonomist, and that the Denver Zoo bred some kind of Green Colored Bamboo type Viper from somewhere in South East Asia or Malaysia, LOL !
Best Regards JohnZ
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RE: Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
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by 23bms on April 7, 2008
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It would appear to be Parias sumatranus, this week anyway.
E: Sumatra Pit Viper
Synonym Coluber sumatranus RAFFLES 1822
Coluber sumatrensis — BOIE 1826: 239
Trimesurus sumatranus - GRAY 1842: 48
Trigonocephalus formosus MÜLLER & SCHLEGEL 1842
Trigonocephalus formosus — MÜLLER & SCHLEGEL in TEMMINCK 1845: 52
Trigonocephalus sumatranus — CANTOR 1847: 1042
Trimeresurus formosus — GRAY 1849: 10
Bothrops formosus - BLEEKER 1858: 263
Trimeresurus formosus - BOULENGER 1885: 388
Bothrops sumatranus - LIDTH DE JEUDE 1886: 52
Trimeresurus (Trigonocephalus) formosus - MÜLLER 1887: 280
Lachesis sumatranus - BOULENGER 1896: 557 (part.)
Trimeresurus sumatranus - BARBOUR 1912: 201 (part.)
Lachesis sumatranus — DE ROOIJ 1917: 282
Trimeresurus sumatranus sumatranus - LOVERIDGE 1938: 45
Trimeresurus sumatranus sumatranus — WELCH 1994: 117
Trimeresurus sumatranus — MCDIARMID, CAMPBELL & TOURÉ 1999: 345
Trimeresurus sumatranus — GUMPRECHT et al. 2004
Parias sumatranus — MALHOTRA & THORPE 2004
[Extracted from the Reptile Database, http://www.tigr.org/reptiles/search.php]
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RE: Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
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by tigers9 on April 7, 2008
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Gee, this reminds me of BS with mountain lion/cougar, at one point they were like 30 subspecies of cougar, they all looked the same, I guess some researchers wanted to have cougar named after them.
Like FL panther controversy, is the kinky tail sign of inbreeding or unique to FL panther subspecies?
Besides, they introduced some cougars from TX, so FL panther is not pure anyway assuming it ever really was a good idea to make them separate subspecies to begin with.
I have a weird question, do any of you all herp people remember monitor Varanews newsletter?
This was in dark ages before internet.
I would love to scan the old newsletters, I just forgot the guy’s name/contact.
Plus, I noticed I was being quoted in mangrove monitors egg laying stats, for example
http://mampam.50megs.com/monitors/indicus.html
SNIP
Kukol (1993) reports that a female of unknown origin and unreported size laid 30 (infertile) eggs between September and January in clutches of up to nine eggs.
SNIP
http://www.mampam.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=65&limit=1&limitstart=1
or
http://portal.ecu.edu.au/adt-public/adt-ECU2007.0012/14refs_Mayes,%20P.J.pdf
or
http://www.curator.org/legacyvmnh/VMNH_Publications/MuseumJournals/Lizard%20Biology/new_page_2.htm
etc…
Anyway, just wondering, if it is important, I might have reported this to Varanews in 1993, but I recently went thru my old Kodachrome slides where I took pics of these wild caught captive laid Indicus eggs and the paper note next to eggs says year 1992, is it important to try to correct this in literature or not?
does 1 year make any difference in this scenario?
Z
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RE: Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
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by Cro on April 7, 2008
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Z, it probably does not matter on the year thing anymore. There were a lot of articles posted on monitors on the varinews, that now have made it to the web. There is bound to be errors on dates as these items are reposted to the web, and would be almost impossible to change.
As far as the sub-species on the Cougar thing, well, in the past there were also a bunch of sub-species of humans also. When I was still in grade school, we had many sub-species of Homo sapiens recognized.
Apparently, that became politically incorrect, and now we can only find the Neanderthals recognized as H. sapiens neanderthalensis, and more modern humans all called H. s. sapiens. But years ago there were many races or morphs of humans recognized by scientist.
What is funny about this, is that it has been almost erased from history. Just try to search the web for proof that there were once Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, and several other races or morphs of man recognized. It is almost impossible to find anymore. But it was at one time in every grade school science textbook.
I guess "truth" belongs to who writes the history books. I guess this has always been true.
Best Regards JohnZ
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RE: Denver Zoo breeds rare Viper
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by AquaHerp on April 8, 2008
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The Gumprecht's viper and the Sumatran Palm look nothing alike. I believe that there is a Gumprecht's picture in Larry's write-up about the new herpetarium at the Abilene Zoo (the snake coiled in the tree) and the Sumatran is the snake gracing the cover of Dr. Harry Greene's book on snake biology.
DH
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