Orange mamba

Okay, now this just isn't right. I think there must be a little gnome in my house that is sneaking into the snake cages with an orange paintbrush.

I have been raising a young Eastern green mamba for three or four years since it was hatched from Carl Barden's parent stock. It was an unusually light colored animal that never turned a really nice deep green like all my other specimens. Visitors often joked that it was not a green mamba, it was a yellow mamba.

Yellow mamba has been slowly turning orange. Not a bright orange, more like a yellow rat snake color. The head and upper body shade from very pale green to yellow, moving to more yellow-brown-orangey tones closer to the tail.

I've seen mambas that were sick or trauma injured go off color, but this is a magnificently healthy specimen in awesome body condition that has never been sick or missed a meal in its entire captive bred life. The color looks nice and vibrant, not dull or off. The snake is in excellent shape. It looks quite handsome. It's just a green mamba that isn't green.

I don't know if this is a genetic aberration, a locality color variant or an artifact of captivity. This snake gets the same good nutrition that all my other snakes do. It gets radiant heat rather than a cage lamp, so the lack of sunlight/UV might concievably have something to do with this. But I've had wild caught mambas in captivity for the same length of time that are kept under identical conditions, and none of them have ever changed color. The adults I got around the same time that were a deep emerald green have kept their rich dark green hue. There is no difference in their husbandry conditions.

Fortunately he should be pretty easy to photograph when I have a bit more time. He'll follow a dead mouse on hemostats anywhere and then sit still to eat it. The trick will be getting all of him into the picture, since there is rather a lot of him and the color changes fairly dramatically from the head all the way down to the tail.

Ray, Scott, you guys have rolled your eyeballs over this yellow beastie before - it's the one right in front of the door in the large Neodesha. It's gotten even odder looking in the past few sheds. The orangey-brown hues on the lower part of the body are a lot more pronounced.

Anyone else ever seen this happen to their greens?

Very interesting Tanith...it appears you and orange snakes go hand in hand...

Awaiting pictures of the orange beauty...

Tanith. I am still rolling my eyes lol. But here is a way off thought. your king went orange my monacle red your mamba orange and now I have another Monacle going orange. Could these changes be remotely triggered by our weather? I spoke to a friend that has also noticed this year his snakes going yellowish orange as well.

I thought maybe it was the food my feeders eat but its brown, then i thought maybe our water{well} so i switched to only bottled. then i though substrate { uncolored cypress}. None seam to be the culpprit so my thoughts now are climate?

I wonder if your mice are being fed a diet high in beta caratean (SP?) If they are being fed a diet high in red-orange veg. matter or an enriched feed it could be passed down the food chain.
I have been changing the color on my albino Mon, with Spiralina powder. It is sold as a color enhancing suppliment for birds. It works great on reptiles too. I rub it into the mouse hair before feeding. It's color has gone from a dull pink to a vibrant orange. It works pretty fast, you will see a change by the next shed.

Serpwidgets (www.serpwidgets.com) has been doing some experimentation with corn snakes and the effect that beta carotene has on their diet.

Might be worth looking at.

Originally posted by Mustangrde1
Tanith. I am still rolling my eyes lol. But here is a way off thought. your king went orange my monacle red your mamba orange and now I have another Monacle going orange. Could these changes be remotely triggered by our weather?

Scott Ricky just sent me pics of the Leusistic Monocle Cobra before and after a change in the atmospheric pressure. I think you may be on something there.

After

Darn you Ray. I saw that cool pic and thought you were really onto something with the atmospheric pressure thing. But my cobras didn't turn orange at all when I stuck them in the microwave. What's up with that?