5 year old baby

[paris]

here are some shots of my D mexicanus, i am not sure of gender. it was born to my large female in 2000. she had given birth to 5 babies, no 'slugs', each measuring about 5 inches.this is my only remaining mexicanus, i had sold 2 of the babies and decided to take 2 to IAD but upon bad advice i kept them too cold and they perished. that left me with 1 baby and the mother-the mother died about 2 years ago. baby is doing fine and i dug 'her' up recently to check on her and get some shots of her. she is now 10" long, that puts her growth at 1" per year. i keep 'her' at room temp in about 4" of soil in a planted terrarium.

i am not sure if this species can be sexed by their vents-but if so , here is 'hers'....any thoughts???

finally after replanting the terrarium(and thus recompacting the soil) i put 'her' back in and it took less than 30 seconds for 'her' to burrow down...

 

[william]

sorry i'm not the best with abbreviations "IAD"?

great animal by the way

 

[pollywog]

International Amphibian Day

 

[william]

oh right, thanks

*kicks himself in leg for being thick*

 

[edward]

Hi Paris,
This species is to my knowledge does not have sexually dimorphic cloacal anatomy.
How cold did you keep them? I have worked with them as low as 72 F with no problems.

Ed

 

[paris]

well it was while i was driving across country-so i kept them in the cooler like salamanders-it was bad advice......

 

[chelsea]

<font color="0077aa"><font size="+1">what is it? ive never seen anything like it! its really kool</font></font>

 

[paris]

these are caecilians, 'the other amphibian'. they are legless and mostly blind and occupy a similar niche to that of fossoral caudates-essentailly salamanders are north of the equator and these take their role south of it. they like it warmer than caudates though. goole them and you will see alot of the different types.

 

[mark]

Actually, many species of caecilian occur north of the equator. Ichthyophiids, many genera of Caecilidae, Rhinatrematidae and Uraetyphlidae all occur north of the equator including the species you keep - Dermophis mexicanus. Furthermore I'm not sure if it is accurate to equate caecilians to fossorial caudates, especially because at least five genera of caecilians are aquatic. I don't know that caecilians are truly analogous to anything.

(Message edited by mike_g on June 29, 2005)

 

[paris]

uh yeah mark, very good, except im trying to offer a simple generalization to a 13 year old who has never seen them or heard of them before, my intent is to give her an answer to get the basics from, she can now google the rest for herself-my intent is not to intimidate with 'foregin' words and overwhelm her with details when she is just asking for basics. as for my analog of caecilians to salamanders-i am not the first to state it and it suits this explanation well......i see your post has been edited by mike, what did he remove?

 

[mark]

You were trying to provide basic information, I was merely pointing out that the information you had provided was perhaps too general and left room for many inaccuracies. I was simply correcting those inaccuracies in an attempt to dispel the spread of false information.

I still do not agree with comparing caecilians to fossorial caudates; I feel this is made merely on the fact they are both amphibians.

Mike did not edit my post, I'm not sure what that is about. I changed some wording myself, however, I can assure you that is the only manner in which my post was edited.

 

[nate]

What Mark neglected to clarify here is that he and mike often use the same computer now, and that is the reason it shows the editing was done by Mike.

 

[steve]

you guys are funny

So is there an ETA for the new discussion board, or is that still way in the future?

 

[edward]

Jesse,.
I deleted your post as only registered members of caudata.org can post want and for sale ads.
If you want to join please do so we are always interested in new members.
Want and for sale ads need to be approved before posting in the wanted or for sale section.

Thanks

Ed

 

[edward]

Steve,
The new discussion board is up and running at
http://www.gymnophiona.org/discussion/

(I'm stealing Nate's pleasure here in announcing it)>>
Ed

 

[paris]

how come nate never told me it was done? huh nate?????

 

[alan]

Sounds like a great opportunity to post some care information on the new site Paris

 

[nate]

Well, I hadn't actually planned on announcing it, I was just going to let people sort of find their way there.

 

[edward]

I made the comment because there had been a specific request on it otherwise I would have also let the people find thier way there.
Ed

 

[nate]

No worries Ed, I'm glad it's out now. What I meant by that comment was I did not want to hit all the existing forums, advertising the new forum like a lot of people seem to do with their new sites. I always found that to be a bit annoying.