I have a young male colombian boa and he changes colors frequently. I currently have him in a 30 gallon high aquarium and since it's so tall, I had to customize it a little. I have a hidebox fixed in the corner at the top right under the heat light with driftwood leading up to it. He has already figured out that this is the hot spot and he has a routine that I've noticed. Every night shortly after the lights go out, he goes up there and coils up in the box. When the lights come back on, he warms up for the day and heads down to bury himself in the substrate until the lights come back on.

I use aspen shavings as the substrate and he usually keeps his head sticking out-I guess so he can keep an eye on things. Now for the color-changing part. Any time he's in his box (at night and in the morning) he is very light colored. Usually he's at his darkest while he's buried in the aspen. However, if I take him out and set him back on the aspen, sometimes he'll just sit on top of it for a while, but he turns much lighter. At first, I thought this could be due to the light colored aspen. I once had a crested gecko on paper towels that was always light colored, then when I switched it to orchid bark, it stayed bright red and brown. I assumed this was some adaptation for helping them blend in with their surroundings, though I don't know how well they perceive color. Anyway, to test this, I got a bag of orchid bark and froze it for several days (in case of mights and other bugs) and made a separate rubbermaid enclosure with the bark as a substrate. I put him in it, but didn't notice any significant color changes. I misted it down to raise the humidity since the aspen he is used to is dry (don't worry he has a large water bowl and humid spots to counter this). After the humidity was increased, there may have been a slight change, but nothing very noticeable.

So now I really can't figure out what causes him to change. I would think that in the mornings when warming up, he would turn darker to absorb more heat, but he doesn't. He tends to be darker when he feels concealed and is away from the heat source. I've been meaning to get pics of him in his light and dark phase, but I can't figure out how to encourage his dark phase. He is usually light when he's out and about and if I remove him from the aspen, he turns light pretty quickly.

In his light phase, he is a very light tannish yellow with orangy brown saddles. When in his dark phase, he is a much darker grayish shade and he gets intense pink highlights with dark brown saddles. He isn't a very dark boa, so his dark phase is really more like a pink phase because the lower half of his lateral body becomes bright pink all the way up onto his face. His back becomes orangy brown towards the tail fading to gray up towards his neck. He never shows these color highlights in his light phase. Can anyone help me understand this better so that I can encourage these different appearances for photographing? Will he likely change color this much all his life or will he pick a color scheme and hold it through adulthood? I know these aren't very important questions, but I don't see color-changing discussed much and I certainly don't understand it in snakes as well as I do in lizards. Thanks in advance for any responses.

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