News Archive

March 2005

Reticulated Python Eggs

On the 22nd March 2005 'Tikki' our 18 foot long Reticulated Python, laid a clutch of over 47 eggs. The eggs are so tightly packed together that it is impossible to know the exact number of eggs laid. Tikki, our Reticulated Python

Reticulated Pythons with Eggs The keepers found both snakes coiled around the eggs when they arrived for work in the morning. Barney, the darker of the two snakes pictured, was displaying very unusual behaviour - normally the males play no role in incubating the eggs, and yet he was obviously transfixed by the event.

Keepers Marc and Roger very carefully removed the eggs and have placed them in an artificial incubator, so they can be incubated at a constant temperature and the keepers can monitor their development.

Reticulated Python Eggs The eggs will take between 88 - 96 days to hatch and any snakes that hatch will go on to other collections in the U.K. and Europe.

June 2005

Reticulated Pythons Hatch

On the 22nd March “Tikki” our female Reticulated Python laid approximately 47 eggs, which we removed in case they were damaged by one of the other pythons or anacondas in the enclosure. On Saturday 18 th June at 4.50pm, those eggs started to hatch in their incubator, and we expect most to hatch over the next eight days; we know it takes this long from our previous records of her reproductive history.

The young snakes are already two feet long when they emerge from their egg and will grow up to a length of over 20 feet and can live up to 30 years.

Before the eggs started to hatch we set up a large glass tank to double up as an incubator and to enable us to do something that we believe hadn’t been attempted before: we borrowed a high quality video recorder from our friend Dr. Vij Sodera in an attempt to “time-lapse” record the whole event of this multiple hatching.

All the eggs and their substrate were placed into this large glass incubator and filming began, with one second being recorded every minute. We hope that the resulting 3 hours film over the eight day event can be further condensed into a 60 minute DVD, to be used for educational talks.

Dr. Sodera first approached the Wildlife Park some four years ago whilst researching for his book “One Small Speck to Man”, about how we and all the other animals past and present evolved on our wonderful planet. Vij is a qualified surgeon and skin specialist and brings a fascinating perspective to questions about all life on earth. To find out more, do visit www.onesmallspeck.com.

Even as we are updating our website, some other amazing things have started to happen: the Jungle Carpet Pythons have also started to hatch and our female Blotched Python has just begun to lay her eggs. This will be the first time that this species has been bred in a UK zoo if they hatch successfully.

Marc Ormond – Head Reptile Keeper

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