My contact with Captive Born Reptiles;
I e-mailed him and asked him about it all,...straight up. Didn't try to provoke him, and tried to befriend him. This is what I got back. You all can read it, and form your own opinions about this guy. But read carefully, and note that he does NOT know how to spell the species with which he works, not to mention several other lines are most probably pure b.s. He should not have called me ignorant, which is why I'm posting this. Read for yourselves and you will get a good feel for what kind of person he is. And what he could be up to. Also note that he left out his name.
But I did look at a pic which Jeff sent me today, and that one has plenty of red/orange on the belly. Maybe Jeff would like to post that pic. It does seem to verify that there are wild red bellied Texans. How they came to be, is, as of yet, a mystery.
Doug, ...good point. Proving, and or disproving what you have, and keeping it separated from the rest of the captive gene pool are both big problems. But our good friend Terry says he can tell the difference. Too bad he won't share that with us. Here is the e-mail he sent me,...
Tony:
You are not the first Indigo enthusiast to question the red that you will see on my texas Indigos. I have observed in the wild and/or collected all but a few species of drymarchon. All of my animals can be traced by me back to their original wild caught parents with very specific locality data that I will not share. I am the world’s largest breeder of drymarchon. This year was a bad year and I only had sixty-two babies, normally, I am near, if not over, a hundred.
I purposely do not buy from other breeders because of the type of ignorance you are displaying. Most, so called indigo nuts have no idea what the hell they are looking at or talking about. I can easily see a bunch of indigo nuts sitting around in some chat room cooking up stupid ideas like the release of eastern indigos into texas indigo habitat or people crossing easterns into to texas to get red on a texas indigo.
I do not participate in indigo forums or spend much time on the internet because I have animals to take care of. There is nothing that I could learn from you guys and I do not have the time to bring you guys up to speed to hold an intelligent, mutually rewarding, conversation with you. 70% of my female errebennus went to Brian Sharp this year and last. Brian and I have know each other for decades and he knows where to come if he wants a pure blooded animal. No one who knows me questions my integrity. Producing hybrids is a business best left to low life’s. Hybrids belong in ones freezer, not taking up cage space. I do not buy from other indigo “nuts” because most of them could not identify most species of drymarchon. Over 80% of the captive produced indigos offered to me I have identified as hybrids. In my entire drymarchon collection, I only have two animals that I did not produce or catch.
My private collection is larger than the two largest zoo collections in the world put together. Aside from being the world’s largest breeder of drymarchon, I have six world first breedings, and I am the world’s largest breeder of green anacondas, Sulawesi Island Retics, St. Lucian Island Boas, and several species of turtles. etc..
I have over forty years worth of experience with drymarchon. I obtained my first D.c. errebennus in 1969 from Don hamper via Frank Bolin, Director of the Gladys Porter Zoo, Brownsville, Texas. If you talked to Bolin, what he would tell you is the same thing that I am about to tell you. The average, true, texas indigo has far more red on it than any eastern indigo. If I where looking to be an ignorant low life and infuse red into either cooperi or errebennus I would be using errebennus to get more red into my cooperi. Red chinned cooperi have a higher value because most cooperi have a white chin.
I hope that you have gained something from this exchange because I certainly have not.
Captive Born Reptiles
1259 Morse Rd.
Columbus, Ohio 43229
614-267-8025
