Black Sumatran Short-tail Python

This is our very first Sumatran at about three years of age. She was possibly the very first live specimen in captivity when she was imported as a baby. We were expecting her to grow up to be a Borneo python, Python breitensteini, so we were surprised when she turned black as she grew.

She was from Lampung Province in southern Sumatra. By the time this picture was taken, we had begun to see other examples of the "black bloods" (as they were known at the time) being imported and we had realized that these were the elusive Python curtus that no one seemed to know much about.