Great Basin Serpentarium

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Great Basin Serpentarium

Promoting education, captive propagation, and responsible pet ownership. Welcome to the Great Basin Serpentarium page.

Here we will keep you updated on shows, recent changes, new sales, and the day to day happenings at our shop. If you're looking for a particular animal let us know. We are currently working with more than 200 species in order to provide captive bred pets for everyone from the first time pet owner to the experienced keeper. Our facility is not open for tours at this time.

12/01/2025

I'm still working on getting the 2024 animals and a handful of juvies and adults from previous years up on our website. More are being added each week!

20/11/2024

Another 6 good (and 4 bad) blue spot Timor eggs. A couple more females look close so I may get a few more in the incubator before the year is out.

13/11/2024

We're looking to find a few more pet stores/jobbers/resellers to supply with quality captive bred kings, gargs, sand boas, blue tongues, tarantulas and more.
If you're a brick and mortar pet store, and expo vendor, or online seller, message us, let us know who you are (address if a store or website if online seller) and start receiving our weekly(ish) wholesale list. Minimum order requirements apply.

12/11/2024

This lovely lady is Shinisaurus crocodilurus (Chinese crocodile lizard). This one in particular is gravid (pregnant) and about to give birth! They have an interesting reproductive cycle. As she gets ready to give birth the male will stop being interested in food and become much more interested in her. He’ll follow her around, court her when he can (seems spraying the enclosure turns this behavior up to 11), and mate with her shortly before and after she gives birth. She then gets to work on the next litter which is often about 1 year later in our collection.

12/11/2024

This elf-shoe-nose-having snake is the Baron’s racer. This incredible arboreal snake from South America is venomous, but is not considered dangerous. They are a rear-fanged venomous snake. As the name implies their venom delivering teeth are toward the back of their mouth. Most rear-fanged snakes are not considered dangerous. There are two known exceptions to this rule. Can you name them?

01/11/2024

The last pumpkin pic. For this season at least. This is one of our Oreo California kingsnakes. We call these wide stripes “Oreos” because not only do they have that thick wide stripe down the back, but also clean white sides and a black belly. The first one to have this look was named“Oreo” and now it has become tradition to name all the others that share that look after her. We’ve been working on outcrossing and refining this line. If all goes well (famous last words) we’ll be able to produce more Oreo kings this upcoming spring. The Oreo look does not follow the simple Mendelian pattern of inheritance (if that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, shame on you for not listening in your high school or college bio courses). Instead, this phenotype is polygenic - multiple genes affect the look. Hopefully in the not too distant future we’ll be able to see an entire clutch of Oreos hatching.

01/11/2024

Love them or hate them, ball pythons are the most common pet snake for a reason. They stay relatively small, they are easy to handle, they’re easy to care for, and they come in a whole assortment of colors and patterns. I started as a staunch anti-fan of these snakes. Working in a pet store in the ’90s I saw many imported ball pythons that were a pain to get eating, not the friendliest of snakes, and lacked much of the phenotypic diversity we saw in the more popular cornsnakes and kingsnakes. Once the albinos and a few other morphs became more popular, captive breeding of ball pythons increased exponentially. Quickly those weak, sickly, grumpy, non-eating imports were replaced with strong, healthy, and much more eager-feeding captive bred babies. And any reptile expo you attend will still be a testament to how great of a pet snake a ball pythons can be. Before you thumb your nose at these incredible snakes, pause to thank them for helping boost the public’s interest in reptiles.

01/11/2024

I was going to post animal facts with the pumpkin pics and I’ll get to that, but a quick detour for a some backstory. I am a huge fan of black and yellow banded snakes. The jungle carpet python (Morelia spilota cheynei) has always been a favorite of mine. As a kid living in a house that had a “no snakes - or mouse eating reptile” rule for most my childhood, I was stuck dreaming of the day I could finally keep one of these. Fast forward a few decades and I get to see these incredible snakes on a daily basis. Carpet pythons are an interesting group of snakes that come out of the egg ready for a fight but even with only occasional handling seem to relax quite a bit by their first birthday. And unlike most snakes, jungle carpet pythons get prettier with age. The babies come out with little hints of yellow and as they grow their colors become more intense.

31/10/2024

Had a bit of fun with the post photo editing of this Goniurosaurus araneus. The beautiful lizard in this picture is one of the many cave gecko species we keep in our facility. The specific epithet (the second part of the scientific name) is in reference to their spider-like long spindly legs. G. araneus is amongst the most gracile and long-legged species of cave geckos. Cave geckos were regularly imported into the US hobby until recently when the genus was added to C.I.T.E.S. (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). This new listing changes the terms under which these lizards can be imported to the US. What this means for the hobby is now many fewer will be imported and the captive breeding efforts of hobbyists are required to keep these animals around for the next generation of hobbyist to enjoy.

31/10/2024

Not really a Halloween theme in color or anything, but I wanted to take this chance to get a photo of our checkerboard worm lizard (Trogonophis wiegmanni). This girl is getting up there in years. We acquired her as an adult in 2018 and sadly we have not been able to find a healthy mate for her. She’s still going strong though so maybe eventually we’ll get that group going.
Anyway, this is not a snake. It looks very snake-y without legs and all, but this is one of the many lizard lineages that have lost legs independently of the line that gave rise to snakes.

31/10/2024

The Rio Fuerte beaded lizard (Heloderma exaspteratum). This amazing lizard from Mexico is part of the family Helodermatidae - the only family of venomous lizards that exist today. For those of you that just put on your “I ❤️ Toxicofera” t-shirts and want to argue, there seems to be ample literature to refute the claims made in those publications. I know… those are fighting words. Perhaps I’ll elucidate more on that later. For those of you not religiously entrenched in that debate, I’ll continue.
The amazing beaded look to their scales goes beyond their scales and includes tiny bits of bone embedded in their dermis called osteoderms. The osteoderms in the head are fused to the top of their skull and if you’ve not seen one yet, Google “gila monster skull” and check that out!

31/10/2024

Brachypelma emilia - One of the many spiders from Mexico that carries a few different common names. You’ll see these labeled as Mexican red legged, Mexican painted leg, Mexican redleg, or some combination of those names. Usually something with red, painted, or orange in it. Whatever the name you see it under, they’re easy to recognize with their Halloween colors of orange and black. These docile spiders are a great species to work with as they’re slow growing, typically very easy to work with, and are quite forgiving of beginning keeper mistakes. This species and all the species in the genus Brachypelma are protected and cannot legally be collected from the wild. Those you see in collections are the result of captive breeding efforts.

31/10/2024

Time for the cliché pictures of animals with pumpkins.
This handsome fellow is Smaug mossambicus. And yep, the name comes from Tolkien’s book The Hobbit.
Males like this guy have a bright orange venter (belly) and dark dosrum (back - think dorsal fin). This species is sexually dimorphic. This means the males are a different color than the females. Females have a dark dorsum (not as dark as the males), a light venter, a small bit of orange on the lower jaw and some orange scales on the belly.
Those newer to the hobby may not remember when these were commonly imported and inexpensive. A change in importation rules meant these common lizards suddenly became difficult to acquire. Luckily a few of us were able to set up breeding projects with this species. Though quite uncommon, these lizards are still around in the hobby. And as a final cool bit about this species, they give live birth.

25/10/2024

The 94th reptile species produced at Great Basin Serpentarium! Varanus gluarti! Kimberly rock monitors! I wasn’t sure if these eggs were going to make it as the eggs were fairly desiccated when I found them. I was able to rehydrate the eggs and a couple made it full term!

27/09/2024

Check out this tiny baby gecko!!! Fresh hatchling Phelsuma robermertensi!

27/09/2024

Some new things being added to the website. As soon as I have a moment to upload the photos that is. Optimistically I will have them all up this weekend! Striped tree skinks are back in stock! A handful of zebra skinks will be added there too. And for the first time, as this is our first year producing them, we will have false water, cobras and Stimson’s pythons available!

25/09/2024

A few recent pairings.
1st: Poecilotheria subfusca Highland (check out the goofy tokay watching in the background)
2nd: Another P. subfusca Highland pair
3rd: Poecilotheria subfusca Lowland
4th: Chilobrachys natanicharum
5th: Ornithoctinus aureotibialis
6th: Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens
7th: Nhandu coloratovillosus
8th: Vitalius chromatus

25/09/2024

A nice surprise from one of the Dumeril’s! This is her first litter and she wasn’t holding back. 11 perfect babies!

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