Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone on this forum know of any such boas here in the U.S.? I was in Ecuador back in 1981 on the Rio Napo and there i saw the most extrodinary boas i have EVER seen. They were similar to the Pucallpa peruvians to some degree but more awesome. They had very very thin saddles the red on the tail was a bright blood red the underside of the head and throat was heavily speckled with black the eyelash marks and mid dorsal stripe on the head were quite pronounced. There was a longitudinal pastel pink "tinting" along the middle side and a blue tinting just below the "corner" transitioning from the dorsal surface to the side. These boas displayed the most dramatic shifts of light to dark i've ever witnessed. I saw 8-10' specimens that showed the same coloration as the 2' juviniles. Simply magnificent creatures. They were collected a few kilometers downriver from the oil town that went by the name Coca on the Rio Napo. If anyone has knowledge of this locale i would love to hesr of it and if anyone is actually breeding these and have young availible please let me know! Thanks
Guy

Hi there,
Altough I'm not from the US, we have some Ecuadorian redtails with verified Lago Agrio locality over here in Europe. I can tell you, these guys and gals are far more beautiful than most Peruvian redtails I have seen (pics).
As regards the US, I know there were some imported Ecuadorian true redtails in the 80ies, early 90ies. Most of them never reproduced in captivity. Others had been thought to be Peruvians and were (mis)labeled as such. I'm not aware of any successful breeding of Ecuadorian redtails with proven origin in the US thus far, but correct me if I'm mistaken.

I wish you had pictures of those specimens from the 80ies. Did you also see specimens with jet black overall (aka Boa c. melanogaster)?

The ones i saw had far narrower saddles than the snakes in your pictures. At the middle of the back they were proportionally about as thick as the head stripe of the snake in the bottom pic about 3/4 of the way back from the nose. The tail coloration was knd of like that same pic only deeper and brighter. As for the all black thing..the one i brought back( i was young back in '81..) would on occasion go nearly black....freaked me out the first time it happened. These boas seem highly variable in terms of their light/dark pigmentation as well as which of the "highlight"colors were predominent at any given moment. The ones i saw i believe were from farther up(west) the rio napo from lago agrio. In my opinion these are by far the most beautiful locale of boa i ve EVER seen. And the large adults they had(8-10') showed no noticible shift in pigmentation from the juvies.... i would love to find some of these!
guy