Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had a friend find him/her in their apartment, and I breed them and plenty others, so he gave it to me. I need some suggestions on what exactly it is. I had a suspicion of Peruvian, but it's unlikely, maybe it's a guyana, suriname? It has a very clean pattern and very distinct colors. Much more narrow head and prefers not to climb. It's only about 3ft and I'm waiting to get my probes so I can confirm its sex. Hearty eater too even after its little journy in an apartment complex.

Thanks in advanced for all your help, I know you all will have fun trying to figure it out. Any questions just ask

-J Lanoue

Common Boa Constrictor, most likely captive born and bred here in the U.S.

Bloodline and recessive genetics undetermined.

Incorrectly called a Colombian Red Tail.

Colombian Boa is the correct layman's terminology.

Commonly referred to as BCI in the trade.

Boa constrictor imperitor - scientific name.

jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

I don't mean to cause trouble, but most of Colombia is occupied by bcc. Only the north west edge is home to bci. In this trade Colombian's are incorrectly id'ed as bci quite often. The only way to correctly id a sub speicies is by scale counts. Which can be done quite easily using a shed.

Anyway, I have a number of BCI and BCC, this looks like neither, at least in a "pure" form. It also, under normal feeding, doesn't grow nearly as fast. It also has "moods" that go weeks at a time. As I said, it's about 3ft long, its grown maybe an inch if at all in the year that I've had it. That's a large f/t rat every 2 weeks. This I know is EXTREMELY unusual, so I'm guessing this is just a bad represetative of the species altogether. If it turns to be male I'll attemp to breed it to see what happens, if it's a female, I'm not even gonna try.

Maybe an insular form of Mexican or Central American Boa constrictor imperitor. Some of them look like that one, don't they? Maybe an adult small boa variety. That would be cool.
jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

Yes, I have a theory about that - the Cordillera Central being the physical barrier dividing the Boa constrictor imperitor tribe to the Pacific side and Boa constrictor constrictor to the Atlantic side in South America. I believe Russo covered the topic in his book.
The whole taxonomy of Boa constrictor ssp., in all it's forms, is somewhat ill defined and ambiguous in my mind.
jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

NOT occupied by bcc. Everything west of the Andies is Bci. Only a small part of Colombia is in Amazonas. The Andies are broad and vast and at higher altitudes Boas don't exist at all. There is a small part of Colombia where the subspecies might intergrade but this has NEVER been proven. The boa listed is nothing but a quite normal Colombian Boa...Bci....TC

upon my statement about Bci being on the west side of the Andies and Bci on the east side I would like to say this. While the range of Bcc is great NO Bcc have been exported from Colombia in over 20 plus years. Everything in Amazonus is prohibited from being exported. All of the babies that are exported are from the Rio Magdalena Valley. Only snakes that are farm raised are exported. In 1992 I visited many of these farms personally and tried to get permits for Amazonus snakes to no avail. Virtually any Colombians on the market today are Bci period. There is one dealer in S. FL. who sells pretty Colombians as Leticia Boas but they in fact are NOT. I believe these sales have started the Leticia Boa missinformation and erronius post. Only in a small part of Colombia close to Venezuela do Bci have a chance of intergradation with Bcc. Western Venezuelan Boas look very much like a cross but it has never been proven. I think with time and DNA testing these things can be sorted out. Again there are NOT lots of Bcc coming out of Colombia misidentified as Bci. I've been to Leticia and believe me the boas look almost exactly like peruvian Redtails.. Sorry about the lengthy dissertation but there is much confusion and dissent about this subject...TC

I think it's great that you expanded, and I think it's great that people have this knowledge. Just means we're steps closer to having that DNA ability to give us an entire history on a snake.

Looks like Colombian BCI to me. BUT . . . you can never tell only by looking. To really know for sure you would have to know exactly where it's ancestors were caught. Even counting scales can be misleading. A mutt CAN exhibit the same number of scales as either of it's ancestors. It's definitely not a Guyana or Suriname, or other Amazon basin BCC, likewise it's not a Peruvian. That much is obvious. Some Colombians have a thinner head and bright colors, and that boa doesn't look all that clean to me by current BCI standards. I don't think how clean a boa is is a measure of anything but that, it doesn't indicate any particular locale, in fact to me it says there's a high likelyhood that selective breeding has been involved. The more generations away from the original habitat, the more likely it IS a colombian too, and from the Northwest corner, because that's where 99% or more came from in the past.
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Caden Chapman
slithering.serpents@gmail.com
http://slitheringserpents.com