there is someone on Kingsnake claiming to have three yellow/red hybrids... he's asking $850 for them, but says he didn't actually see the female lay them... so there's no "proof" (imho)

I've seen them Kelly and they are just Redfoots

cdmay do you know if there are any pictures around of the hybrids that occured in captivity? I too have never seen a hybrid come out of the wild and as far as I know Peter Pritchard hasn't either.
I personally haven't seen any of the hybrids produced in captivity.

rfbt what you are describing is the difference between males and females. Males have the arrow shaped heads and females heads are more toad shaped. The males have less domed shells with pinched waists in the Northern population, females have domed shells with no pinched waists.
My pair of Surinames were exactly this way.

Danny

When I go outside and look at mine its like I can tell the differnce right away. But I dont have a large colombian male just a small one with pyramiding so I cant say for sure what an adult male looks like.

If I am reading this abstract right (and believe me, I can't make heads or tails of some of it!), there is DNA evidence of either hybridization or something else going on in the wild...

http://www.springerlink.com/content/6n5l773324822013/

(The Xingu River branches off the Amazon to the south close to the river's mouth. The Xingu runs right down the middle of Brazil.)

I do not have any photos of the supposed hydrids I have seen but they were all captive produced and there have been only about two or three that I actualy saw.
As for the shell shape differences between the Colombian and Suriname populations I think that Redfootedboxturtles is only looking at a few animals. If you look at a large group of the the two populations you will find that they vary tremendously within each group. All of my Colombian animals that I had in the 70s and 80s were different from one another in shape...and yes, I had a male that had greenish and white scutes mixed in with the yellow and orange on his head. A cool looking dude.
My two adult female cherryheads are quite different in size and shape even though I picked them from the same group of juveniles years ago.

BTW...does anyone have the full article on the Xingu River tortoises?

Cdmay that is true. I only have a couple of each...

Would a natural hybrid warrant a subspecies name?

or would it just be .....X.....

This post was last modified: 02-18-2008 12:05 PM by Redfootedboxturtles.

[quote=Redfootedboxturtles]
Would a natural hybrid warrant a subspecies name?

No. A hybrid would just be a cross so no name would be applied although you might put that 'X' between the two species names.
It would read Geochelone (Chelonoides) denticulata X carbonaria.