Reptile leather

Reptiles leather is leather that come from reptiles like snakes, lizards, crocodiles and alligators. They are usually used to make expensive shoes and handbags.

The difficulty in the production of leather from reptiles is generally that their skin structure compared to mammals has reduced stretchability and lower total usable surface. Undamaged reptile skins are rare and in contrast to cattle the rest of the animals cannot be used profitably for other purposes (food production etc.). For crocodiles, only the belly and skins of younger animals are processed to leather. This makes reptile leather significantly more expensive. Usually hides between 28 and 35 cm width are used.

Due to the threatening situation for many species of reptiles, many reptile leathers cannot be sold anymore or can only be sold under strict rules since 1976 (CITES - Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild fauna and flora).

Legitim sold reptile leather have a seal of the International Reptile Federation and a reptile species protection label, which gives information about the year and place of manufacture, manufacturing company, reptile species and article group by means of a number code.

These leathers come from reptile farms such as the Samut Prakarn Farm in Bangkok, Thailand, where about 20,000 reptiles are kept on 400,000 square meters and about 10,000 hides are produced each year. A farm of comparable size is also located in Mombasa, Kenya.

Python leather.

Lizard leather. Handbag of green iguana.

Crocodile leather.

Cocco-Ligator

In Italy, there is a material which is used for bags and is called "Cocco-Ligator". The manufacturing process appears to be patented. In this process, fibres of split leather of crocodiles and alligators are heated, then provided with a high-gloss surface and then glued to a further leather layer. The method is also referred to as the "ligathor method". The surface is embossed in crocodile surface style.

Although this leather is advertised as innovative and as something special, it is only heat-bonded leather fibres from split leather, which is then glued onto another leather. It is questionable, whether the material should be declared as "leather" at all. The consumer might think that it has to do with real exotic leather, as it is according to the description, but the base material is waste obtained from production of reptile leather.