Giant questions / musings ...

personally thought Moose looked a bit funny in the last issue of Reptiles, I've never seen that folded look he's got to his belly skin in any of my leos, even the really fat ones

i think that is the leo equivalant of "back fat" or a "belly roll"... he looked quite obeese

if two sub - specifics , one of much larger and one of smaller "normal" size breed and there are 2 sizes of offspring . would it still be consider the size is due to "selective breeding " ?

VERY FAT in that issue .

theyre "love handles" lol

I think Robin is correct! I also think that regular tremper Albinos might be another sub species or a mix of the two. Have you guys compared baby trempers with normals, they have different faces. Their faces are kind of long and wide. Also moose does look very obese. None of my Giants look obese. To be honest, I have normals that are pretty much the same size as my Giants, but they are very fat. With the Giants it seems that they just have different bodies, longer faces, longer torsos, longer tails. I'll no for sure it its co-dom or not though, I've got about 14 Giant eggs (Giant x Giant) so far........ at least one should be a Super Giant, right?

Also, Alberto has bred alot of Giants x Giants and last I talked to him (a few months ago) he had yet to produce any Giants as big as Moose. So, he has been breeding Giants for a few years....... and he still has not produced a Super, last time I talked to him. I honestly think Giants are a different Sub-species that have been selectively bred for size. One last thought, all of the "Designer Giants" like the carrot-tails, carrot-heads and Jungles don't seem to get as large as the regular Albino Giants. Maybe this is because Ron has crossed the bloodlines of normal geckos into the Giant species bloodline?

Matt

I agree with Robin completely on this subject, and recommend going to the library and checking out the book, "The Lizards of Iran" by Professor Dr. Steven C. Anderson. I have had the priviledge of speaking with him (he works for the San Francisco Natural History Museum) and has done more field studies on Leopard Geckos than anyone I know. He has a wet collection of wild caught Eublepharids, and from what I understand there are are some really big geckos. Also, in one of his publications through the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR) he states that, "Tremper collected and selected variants for the pet trade that exceeded variations observed in the field, and the parental stock came from Pakistan" (Tremper 1997:16-17)

Aso, my veteriarian has a colony of WC Leopard Geckos that exceed 270 mm (almost 11 inches) in overall length, and weigh in the 135-150 gram range.

someone showed us , had a picture of E. Aramainyu (sp?) that they state is the largest sub species , and looks like quite a few of the Giant het Albinos i am seeing for sale @ Geckos etc. (steve sykes)

if two sub - specifics , one of much larger and one of smaller "normal" size breed and there are 2 sizes of offspring . would it still be consider the size is due to "selective breeding " ?

it could be impossible to know without continual breeding...
generally sub species crosses give you three thing... some the size of one parent, some the size of the other parent and some smack dab in between..

Now back to the boas for a second. hog island boas, an unsular form of BCI (off the coast of honduras) in nature they are a "dwarf" race.... generally not getting more than five feet in total adult length BUT in captivity they can easily get six ot seven feet (i have heard of two eight footers but i doubt the validity).

so what i am saying is even a dwaf subspecies captive could get larger that it's wild cousins. So why could not a larger race of gecko get even larger in captivity than its wild cousins? and that even including outcrossinf or breeding... just for the simple fact it has more to eat and most likely uses much less energy.. thus burning less fat(in adults) but in growing babies this would lead to bigger babies (in theory of course since we do not have any to experiment with) and in turn a larger leo on the whole.
however this spawns many questions about growth and also feeding.. what REALLY is appropriate? but yet we have to look at our particular geckos and find what is best for them. some babies might weight 40 grams in four months... some 20... crap some of the giant even 60 at four months.....it all depends on the particular gecko and its genetics (im talking its wild genetics.. sub species even considering crosses and what not) some slow growers some more rapid

Dan, the "fishy" website is AFGHAN GECKOS, and they claim that the E. turkmenicus is the largest of the species/sub-species, while the "legitimate" website LEOPARD GECKOS of the WORLD claims that the E. Angramainyu is the largest. To me, this only reinforces the theory that individual groups of Leopard Geckos in the wild "adapted to its environment and i honestly doubt, if that the giant is from a sub specific line.." as Robin stated.

just going by my "phishy" memory . got the 2 sites info mixed up . pretty sure it was one of the afgan gecko sites pics of "angramainyu" that i was refering to though