Practical Reptile Keeping Magazine No.60 Meet Mrs White Back Issue

Breeding new bearded dragon morphs these days seem to be rather like buses. You wait for one, and then two come along together! Hot on the heels of last month’s exclusive photographs of what may prove to be a paradox morph, we now have another new British first in this field, courtesy of Monkfield Nutrition. Mrs. White, as she has been christened, is truly striking, as you will have seen from the cover. There are further photographs of her inside. It just goes to show that you do not necessarily need to have bright colours to create a stunning impression. It will be very interesting to see how things progress, once she starts breeding, and further insights into this mutation can be obtained. It’s strange that a few decades ago, it was impossible for people even to breed bearded dragons, let alone imagine the vast and ever increasing palette of colours that now exists in these lizards. The same can be said
for ball (royal) pythons too. It is therefore easy to forget that progress can sometimes be painful, as Christian Castille outlines, when describing his experiences with a rare snake from South America. But there are signs of success as well, with the breeding of poison dart frogs having moved forwards in leaps and bounds over recent years. This month, there’s a profile of their African counterparts – the mantellas. These beautiful frogs have perhaps been rather overlooked, but they also off er plenty of scope for enthusiasts. Have you been badly aff ected by the recent storms? Watching the scenes on television, and the way that in many areas, the water rose so fast, I wondered how any reptile keepers caught up in that nightmare would be coping with their pets. If you encountered problems, do let us know. There was at least one turtle swimming in the Channel that sadly didn’t make it safely through the stormy seas to calmer waters, as reported on our news pages.