Book by Dave & Tracy Barker and Mark Auliya
Review by Billy Hunt
This book is the third volume in the Pythons of the World series from the Barkers. If this is your first time reading a Pythons of the World book, you should be aware that this book primarily focuses on natural history, scale counts, and other taxonomy topics pertaining to each species covered in this volume. This book can be used as a resource for a herpetologist or a learning tool for a hobbyist that wants to learn the more scientific aspects of the species covered in this book.
Each chapter that is dedicated to each species and subspecies is broken down as follows: Size, appearance, head scales, body scales, habitat, and one of my favorite aspects of this book, it points you in the direction of more information of telling you where you can read papers consisting of more information than the book has. After that, it has fantastic field pictures with locale info for each picture. Then each chapter ends with a map showing where that species or subspecies for the chapter is found. I personally found the spotted python chapter and the breakdown of multiple subspecies for white lip pythons the most interesting. There are a few subspecies that were only identified from wet specimens that were found in different areas than they are known to inhabit.
If you like high quality pictures of animals in the wild with locale info, this book is definitely for you. I would highly recommend anyone that keeps any of the Asian pythons or just has an interest in that group of animals to add this book to your library.
