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Meet my new baby snakes!!

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Botti
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01 Aug 2009, 10:59 pm

Nice looking snakes!


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LosFrida
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02 Aug 2009, 8:02 pm

stickboy26 wrote:
LosFrida wrote:
Not a huge fan of snakes but your babies are gorgeous. I hope Ace does okay. That picture of Brianna and Bryon side by side is mindboggling- if I didn't know better I would never have guessed they were the same age.

Congratulations on your new pets.


Actually Bryon is the dad. That's why the baby's name is "Brianna" because she looks like a miniature copy of her dad "Bryon." I just took the side-by-side pictures from different distances so they would appear the same size, for ease of pattern comparison.

Ace and Brianna are the siblings. :)


:oops: Sorry about that.


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southwestforests
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02 Aug 2009, 9:49 pm

Question - how do they get started cutting through the egg shells?
If memory is correct, snake eggs are softer than bird eggs, yes?
They are attractive little critters.


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stickboy26
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03 Aug 2009, 5:45 am

southwestforests wrote:
Question - how do they get started cutting through the egg shells?
If memory is correct, snake eggs are softer than bird eggs, yes?
They are attractive little critters.


The hatchlings have an "egg tooth" attached to their snouts that they use to get out of the egg. I was able to observe it for the first time with these guys. The "tooth" is actually a hardened upper lip that has a sharp edge across the bottom. If you run your finger across it just right it almost feels like a knife edge. The snake uses it to cut a slit in the eggshell so it can get out. Within a few days of hatch, the egg tooth softens and is no longer sharp. It then comes completely off with their first shed.

The egg tooth would have been difficult to actually see if I hadn't known exactly what I was looking for.

And yes the egg shells are not rigid like bird eggs. They are flexible and have a texture more like thick paper or something. They are kept "inflated" by the fluid pressure of the amniotic sac, which is why they dent in and collapse when they get too dry.


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GriffinGuitar12
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03 Aug 2009, 5:24 pm

Why does the title of this thread remind me of a Frank Zappa song? ;)