Yes!!

Please DO keep us updated!!

Hi Eric,

The best way would be to contact the herp professors at the closest large universities(y). Explain what happened and if they would just do a simple DNA comparison between Mother and Daughters, assuming offspring are female. It will most likely attract their attention, especially if it is the first reported case in reptiles or snakes. It is not expensive for a lab to do this once they have the equipment so the bio department at a university may do it pro bono just the pursuit of knowledge (or much more likely, a potential published paper).

Hey everyone, quick update, One of the two baby D.B's shed yesterday, I took a quick snapshot of it also, and I'll post it asap!! They are both much more alert now, and the one that shed even attempted a little "shake" at me :P Attempt at feeding soon!

Cool - freeze the shed, you may be able to use it fro DNA if you go that route.

Looking forward to pics

Congrats on the shedding milestone!!

They'll be trying to strike you in no time!!

I am 99% sure that Colorado State Vet Hospital does DNA testing on all types of animals (I know they do dog, equine, and avian). You can call them and they may be able to help you or tell you a center somewhere around that can help you. It doesn't have to be local, if you are good enough with animals which it sounds like you can take your own blood samples, cool them, and send them in for testing. You could also have a local herp guy draw the blood and have it sent out. However, you might be able to visually look at them. I am not sure about EDB's as much as other reptiles, but if it is asexual reproduction with identical DNA they would have the same patterns and actually should be identical copies of one another (unless somehow there was a DNA mutation in embryo, which would mean your snake had a form of cancer before it was born... very unlikely). I am not a super herp guy, but I am working on my degree in Biomedical Engineering and have my degree in Biochemistry so I can help on the reproduction end if you need it :)

Thanks for the info. I have sent out a few contacts to a few places and waiting to hear back, Also I am getting a good friend of mine that deals alot with hot specific herps to come in and help sex them before I go to crazy into it, either way it is just awesome to have these little guys with us. Here is an updated picture from the first shed out that they had!

How pretty!!!

Hey just wanted to actually update you (this interested me so I had to look further into it). I talked to a geneticist here at Colorado State that also happened to be an avid reptile lover. He told me that with reptiles, the genes can shift or become abnormal fairly easily when compared to that of mammals. However, it is still a 90%+ chance that if they are asexual reproductions they would be identical not only to each other but to their mothers. He did say, however, that the fact one had a bad eye could mean either that their was an error in replication during the asexual DNA encoding (could happen), that it is actually a poorly formed twin of the other with a few genetic morphs (very unlikely), but that likely it was somehow sperm that had been stored. He said that he has heard of some snakes going upwards of 4 years in captivity, so 6 is possible though extremely impressive (and even made a joke/hint at calling Guinness too haha). This leans more towards my thinking. Genetics are pretty specific and in asexual reproduction to get one morph from the parent gene is uncommon enough, but to have two snakes that don't look 95% identical at least tells me there was another parent in there. In all honesty, that is more impressive to me than parthenogenesis... 6 years is a loooong time.

Very interesting. I still have yet to have someone come up and help me sex these little guys yet, but they are moving around quite a bit, and seem to be showing interest in getting ready for their first meals finally, so hopefully that will happen this week. The mother ate a small rabbit today, which is her first meal since giving birth to the babies.