It seems there are species in the hobby that don’t get paid much attention to in both the private sector and the scientific community. But every so often we see a book that completely rewrites the rules on how we have kept a species for decades.
Naturally, these kinds of publications cause a division of sorts between hobbyists; ones that refuse the new information and ones that wholeheartedly stand by the new “gospel”.
If you have kept or looked into keeping Green Tree Pythons then there are two books that were more than likely recommended to you. Green Tree Pythons: Natural History and Captive Maintenance by Terry Phillip and Justin Julander and/or The More Complete Chondro by Greg Maxwell. Both of these books were published more than a decade apart with Maxwells’ book being the original. With a gap that large, obviously things are going to have changed a bit! But this review is about Green Tree Pythons: Natural History and Captive Maintenance.
Personally, I think this book was a game changer and made a big splash in the chondro community because it took a large majority of the information we thought to be the “guidelines” and threw it out the door.
The book outlines what we’ve been doing wrong in keeping Green Trees (keeping them too wet, too hot, and too fat) but then explains these issues and solutions. Both Phillip and Julander take information from the species native range like rainfall, temps, and field studies, paired it with data that Rico Walder of Signal Herp collected and essentially proved that we are, in fact, keeping these animals too hot, too wet, and too fat!
So if you’re looking for a great book that outlines all this information as well as the natural history of the species, this is a GREAT book to add to your herp library and a resource chondro keeper find themselves going back to again and again.
