RAUK - Archived Forum - Posts by Crunchie:

Hullo all,

This is my first post onthis forum and I was hoping someone that has seen more slow worms than myself (can't be hard) could help me out.

I have two slow worms one of which I bought from a shop last summer (before anyone bites my head off the shop is mentioned in sslithsto's topic also on this section of the forum). The other I bought in 1998 from a local pet shop which had been captive bred in Germany - the petshop has since closed down.

I'm pretty sure my older one (Eirinn) is a female, she has a dark brown back with dorsal stripe with black flanks and belly she's also quite a bit chunkier than my newest one.

The one I bought last year (Harris) I was sure was female when I bought it but now I'm starting to wonder whether or not (s)he may be a male still in juvenile colouration. Since I believed her/him to be female I did not think it was a problem to keep her with my original female after a quarentine period but obviously I'm concerned now that after a recent shed she seems to have lightened in colour a bit. If she did turn out to be male would it bebest to seperate the two due to one being from Russia the other from Germany? 

Here are some photos to let people see...

Eirinn my definate female is a fantastic little character, overthe years she has become very tame and often takes food from fingers, begs for food and bites fingers when she doesn't get food (not too hard I might add). Slow worms really are fabulous little animals so as part of my introduction I'll add some of the funniest pictures I have of Eirinn as well...

This is the "beg"

She's a bit nosey about things going on outside her viv

No one has any idea?

Does anyone then know of another forum or someone I could email to get an answer?

Hi Crunchie

really why go and buy slowworms when you can get them from the wild in the UK from local gardens etc - anyway - to sex them I would say that if you gently pressed on the body near the cloaca and pushed towards the vent probably releasing poo eventually the hemipenises would expose themselves in a male. If none show up then they are females.

if you dont like the sound of that you can look at the shape of the tail just after the vent - you may be able to make out the hemipenal bulge like in snakes and viv lizards. picture of the exposed hemipenises (cant spell)

Jon

[QUOTE=Crunchie] Yes unfortunately I saw an add on a reptile classified add site last year advertising common lizards and slow worms as F2 generation so legal to sell. Unfortunately it eventually turned out that the person selling thought that F2 meant they had to be kept in captivity for two years. To make matters worse they offered to send the slow worms out by Royal mail special delivery which is illegal in itself. [/QUOTE]

I hope this was reported? And if not, do you have a name/email etc of the seller/sellers?, if so PM me and I'll pass it on to the relevant people. Sadly a prime example of why it's a bad idea to post on the net specific sites that herps occupy, plays right into the collectors hands. I always like to think that this is a thing of the past but sadly we know this not to be true. 

John,

I think it may well have been a juvenile as it wasn't very long (I only saw the one). I had a little pile of cork bark outside as I kept giant millipedes at university (was too lazy to put it in the bin) and on my way out one night I spotted the newt on it. I think it would have been about 7cm long including the tail.