Defying the odds Thai Bamboo clutch!

Serenity laid her first clutch earlier this year. Back in 2014, she and Atari produced one set of fraternal twins, a male and a female. The rest of that season and the two she's had after, no twins.

When candling this first clutch of this year, I noticed one of the eggs appeared to have two "cheerios" and was wondering if it had twins. Fast forward to yesterday when the first egg slit but no nose poked out, so after about 12 hours, I cut it and could tell it was dead, so removed them from the egg. Turned out to be two complete full term babies with nothing obviously wrong. So, needless to say, I was pretty bummed about that.

Another egg with a single baby pipped yesterday and emerged this morning. A bit later, another egg pipped and baby stuck his head out. Then a second egg slit but after a few hours hadn't popped a nose out so I got a bit worried and cut a bigger hole in the egg, could tell the baby was still alive but couldn't see a head, so left it be another few hours. Came back to check them again just a bit ago and got a huge shock! That last egg had two heads poking out! We have a second and thankfully live set of twins! That's two twin sets in one 6 egg clutch.

Is there a known % chance of how rare twins are to have happen even once? Let alone twice in ONE small clutch...and three times so far in the momma's life? Seems extraordinary!

brian60 said:

Is there a known % chance of how rare twins are to have happen even once? Let alone twice in ONE small clutch...and three times so far in the momma's life? Seems extraordinary!

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I've never heard of any good stats on twins. Not super rare but fairly uncommon based on 10 years of being in reptile groups. Triplets and even quads aren't unheard of, though I think the only species I've seen that in are retics. Personally, in 8 years of breeding, I've had twins only once before this, the one I mentioned before from this pair. And I've had one two faced corn DIE hatchling, an unsuccessful start at identical twins.

I've never heard of more than one egg in a clutch having multiples though.

Tavia said:

I've never heard of any good stats on twins. Not super rare but fairly uncommon based on 10 years of being in reptile groups. Triplets and even quads aren't unheard of, though I think the only species I've seen that in are retics. Personally, in 8 years of breeding, I've had twins only once before this, the only I mentioned before from this pair. And I've had one two faced corn DIE hatchling, an unsuccessful start at identical twins.

I've never heard of more than one egg in a clutch having multiples though.

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Quite sad and unfortunate about the others not having the best of luck, but too cool to see it happened somewhat successfully how it did this time in rather unique fashion!

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The first twin is out and a little rocket. Got one flying picture while trying to get a weight, which is probably 2.2 or 3.2 grams, the scale was really struggling to get a reading, so not sure whether to trust either of those numbers. It's a male.

I really love the bridging between the stripes on these guys, and the ones you have with 3 or 4 bridges. It would be really cool looking if the whole snake was bridged like that.

Shiari said:

I really love the bridging between the stripes on these guys, and the ones you have with 3 or 4 bridges. It would be really cool looking if the whole snake was bridged like that.

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I have to agree! That last picture of the newly emerged hatchling...I LOVE the rather simple yet awesome design.

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I really like the cross bars too, the more the better. Unfortunately they fade out and mostly disappear by the time the snake is 3 or so. I hatched this one in 2015 that had 5 cross bars.

So cute!!

The other twin is out now. He was much calmer and let me get some good pictures and a good weight on him. He is 3 grams and male as well. Looks the same as the first twin.

Have there ever been twins that aren't the same sex?

The very first pair of twins from this pair in 2014 were a male and a female.

Little morbid but I attempted to sex the first pair of DIE twins in this clutch. Haven't tried that on snakes that weren't alive before, so not sure how well it might work. But they both appeared to be female.

The 6th and last baby had emerged this morning.

So the embryos must have been shelled together?? As opposed to an embryo that divided?

Nanci said:

So the embryos must have been shelled together?? As opposed to an embryo that divided?

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That's what I was guessing.