One obvious point not made here is that regurgitation is likely a relic of captivity. Baby boas, namely BCC, regurgitate because we fail to provide them the correct environment, not because of genetic faults on their part. Perhaps we handle them after a meal, keep them too warm or cool, provide too large of food item, too often, etc. The BCC babies probably don’t regurgitate in nature.



While some individuals even from the same litter might behave differently, I believe that regurgitation is induced by captivity and thus breeding a boa that had a gurge at one time THIS IS NOT THE SAME as breeding say, boas born with one eye from a litter where some siblings also had one eye. I don’t know of any BCC breeders I’ve talked to that attempt to preserve animals born deformed, born with kinked backs, etc, nor do they try to propagate them



And, if your inference is correct that regurgitating IS a genetic propensity, surely nonetheless WE STRENGTHEN the genetics of our CBB boas by inducing a higher incidence of the regurgitation syndrome in captivity. This in turn causes higher than natural death rates of these individuals, thus eventually removing more of these from the gene pool than would naturally propagate.



I think the same thing goes for premature birthing AND for slugs. I don’t think nature makes much of either of these. Actually, I don’t hear much of premature birthing amongst the BCC guys I talk to (I have heard and seen a lot more of it with morphs). And while I am sure it has happened, I think it is far more the exception than the rule and in many of those instances, it is probably induced by US not providing the proper environment. Stressors, handling, improper temps, animals being gravid while imported, etc have all been mentioned as potential premature birthing causes. None of these are in nature.



So again, a boa born premature under these conditions or having regurgitation induced by environmental conditions IS NOT likely to be genetically abnormal or weak. These things are called an acquired characteristic, which is not genetically transferred. Kind of like if I have a lizard and cut off its tail, and even if I breed it to another lizard whose tail is cut off, the resulting offspring WILL STILL have tails.



However, your approach of euthanizing interests me. Please let me know how/when we should be euthanizing our baby boas based on their yolk mass at birth. Do we take yolk to body mass ratio? What is the cutoff ratio? I am curious how you’ve done this.

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