Monday, August 07, 2006

Vent Hybrids???

Last year I traded two 2-year-old male Citronella Tincs to a guy for a pair of “blue-legged vents” he had gotten from __________(I won’t use their name and will refer to them as X). After a few months in quarantine I went to the move the frogs to their new home, but instead I found out that one of the frogs had died.

I then began my search for a mate for this frog. Not wanting to mix frogs from different lines, I contacted X (the person who supplied the frogs to the guy I traded with) to find out what line they sold to him. This person patched me to another person they had bought the frogs from. That person could not remember who they got the frogs from.

This got me thinking. Are all “blue-legged vents” from the same line? I asked the question on Dendroboard and got no response. I then posted the same question on Frognet. The only person that responded was Tor Linbo.

He responded back to my question by saying:

I have 3 types of yellow vents... these have little information on where they are from... one from Dutch breeder, years ago, ... another from an animal importer that I think is gone from the hobby... another imported by a reptile breeder who thought he was getting snakes and ended up with frogs... all standard yellows like the ones in Heselhaus... one a little more metallic...

He also referred me to his site www.natures-web.org where he lists 5 different morphs of yellow vents (not including the red vents). Of those five there is two with metallic bronze legs, one with metallic green-blue legs, and two with coppery bronze legs.

Tor sent another email saying:

There are at least 2 more lines in Europe... also an "albino" line that is from Germany that may still be in the US.

Later I bought some vents (never mixed them with the odd vent I already had) from Herpetologic who said his blue vents came from:

My blue leg ventrimaculatus come from a few sources, one is zoo stock and one is a European import.

This research leaves me with a bunch of questions. What is a “blue legged vent”? What is a “gray legged vent”? How many people know which “blue legged vents” they have?