Book by Sid James, Review by Ryan Cox
When we get into keeping, we are often ignorant as keepers. We shouldnt take offense to this as it is a new world with A LOT of information which can lead to information overload. When I got back into the hobby two years ago I ran into this a lot. I realized there were some subjects which didn’t have good literature to accompany it. This made me so thankful for books like Reticulated Pythons by Sid James. This book is a good source of information but in a simple, easy to digest format. It’s a fantastic fix for the ignorance of new and old keepers.
I will not lie to you. I often found myself scanning pages before reading them because Sid didn’t hold back on the pictures. Almost every single page has a great photo. Many of which come from familiar faces and names of the reticulated python keeper community. You can appreciate the book more when you see genetic stripes from people like Travis Warren or locality stuff from Rodney Boalich.
The way he writes is straightforward but never overly complicated. This makes retaining the 37 pages of husbandry very easy. The husbandry information is also fantastic and a different perspective is offered with Sid, himself, being a newer keeper. He presents all manners of keeping whether it is the more sterile 8×4 vision cage with paper and a large water dish; or a large planted bioactive room of sorts. There are never absolutes and he presents the options with pros and cons for the reader to decide what option may work best for them.
One of my favorite parts of this book is the morph and localities section. It’s broken down in two simple sections of recessives and incomplete dominant genes. This is where I find my main problem and it’s with the pictures to accompany the genes which I love. If you read you’ll see an awesome comparison of the Clark albino strains. As well as a breakdown of the different strains of T+ albino. Unfortunately the literature is lacking pictures of homozygous expression of incomplete dominant genes. We have amazing photos of sunfires, marbles, and motleys. But not a single picture of a homozygous form of motley so a reader can’t visualize it. We don’t get to see what an awesome homozygous tiger looks like with it being all striped out. But that is my lone complaint with this book.
This book is a great tool for anyone who is wanting to keep reticulated pythons whether they be mainlands or insular subspecies. I can also see where it would be useful for even a veteran keeper as some outside the box information.
Grab a copy ->
