Extreme, Blue, B&W, what's the difference?

[Johnners]

I've looked into this subject a fair amount but the only answer I can seem to get is there is little to no difference between a b&w and an extreme. I read an article somewhere about a man (called Rob I think) who basically labelled his stock this in order to put on a higher price tag and conned people out lots of money. Is this true?

Also, having never seen a real Blue are they really blue? I'm in the UK and tegu's don't really seem as readily available as the US and I was told they are basically more white. But isn't that a high white B&W?

Incase you haven't gathered I'm very confused! If anyone could shed some more light on the subject that would be great.

 

[cab5392]

I am new to the tegu world, but have been researching as much as I can. From what it seems, there are 3 recognized species of tegu in the pet trade. Columbian(gold), Argentine (B&W), and Red. Chacoans are an argentine morph, sizes can vary. Blues are likely more "heavily" morphed albinistic Argentines from what I have read. They have more pronounced whites, a smaller frame, and can be light blue in hue.

 

[N8bub]

Extreme, chacoan, argentine bnw, blue, firebelly etc. Are all the same species, salvator merianae. That being said south America is a big place and different locales will look different to varying degrees. Blues can definitely look blue but some are more than others. Blues are not albinos yet there are some albino blues. And lastly the extremes were just large whiteheaded ( chacoan) tegus, selectively bred for those traits. But as you already have read that turned into a debacle, because the man in question had afew tegus breeding, and saw an opportunity to make money under the label"extreme" and sold tegus he did not produce. At the end he was flat taking money w/o sending tegus . However there's no denying some of his early products turned out to be big tegus. Hope that helps

 

[Roadkill]

N8bub is pretty correct on the subject. There are a lot of names going around, but no definitive description for any of them aside from actual species (of which, in the pet trade as cab5392 has stated, there are definitively 3 - Tupinambis teguixin, Salvator merianae, Salvator rufescens). Now, with a recent paper, all the Colombians may not be the same species and therefore there may be other Tupinambis species that look very similar to teguixin, but considering people can't seem to understand that "blues", "Chacoans", "extremes", "purples", "firebelly" are all the same species but with different phenotypes, let's just say it's probably best we don't go there for the time being. As for Blues being albinistic, while there can be "degrees" of albinism, this is NOT an example of such. However, at least in the US, the original lineage of Blues seemed to have produced a high amount of albinos, this indicates that there was a high degree of inbreeding going on, that the original stock was likely from the same litter. It's hard to gauge if this is still such a concern as A) for some reason no one keeps track of pedigree with reptiles (which they really should if they want to use these names) and B) beings as these morphs are not clearly defined, everyone calls a tegu whatever they want to these days, and so a "Blue" may not have anything to do with the original stock and may just be a similar looking variant.

 

[Johnners]

Thanks for each explination. I used to keep a collection arachnids (that has depleted) and whilst there are always a wide range of common names you could always go back to the scientific name to be precise. With tegus, in a nut shell, I gather there are few specie variations but a number of colour morphs.

All I know for certain is owning a tegu is one of the best things I've ever done!