@DaLilFishie Oh boy…from this angle it’s really tough to tell, but the spot pattern definitely doesn’t fit with a honeycomb (H. undulata) or a leopard (H. leoparda). I’d say they’re not roseate enough to be a fine-spotted leopard (H. tutul) either, but it’s not impossible. This would lead me to either reticulate (H. uarnak) or Australian (H. australis). Given the location of your specimen, I’d say it’s fairly unlikely that it’s an Australian unless they collected it there. So I’m going to go with a reticulate, as the shape also looks right for the ones I’ve seen of that species, with a fine-spotted leopard being my next pick.
@Local_Shark thanks for your IDs! Not impossible for it to have been collected in Australia, Cairns Marine exports aussie elasmobranchs worldwide. Sorry for the poor angle in the pic!
@DaLilFishie That’s a good point, definitely worth considering. The new data seems to indicate that the population of spotted whiptail rays out in Australia is that species. So yeah it’s probably one of those two, given that H. uarnak recently has been determined to not even occur east of India that may make an Australian more likely.
