Reptile & Amphibian Forums

.....And how did you learn to do it? Before now, we would take our newly acquired boas to our super vet, who was always very accurate with his probing. Now we live more than 500 miles from him, and with all our new babies, I feel I am at a point where I should definitely learn to do it for myself.

Any and all responses are greatly appreciated.....

....Jesse Van Atta

-----
"Continuing to cling to the patterns you know, inhibits your ability to discover what you don't know." - Eric Allenbaugh

I personally like to pop babies to tell their sex. You can also run the tip of your finger down the snakes tail under the vent applying a little pressure between your thumb and middle finger "middle finger on the underside" you can fell two little bumps in males and none with females. With adults the best way to sex them is to probe them. It is very easy to do. Just use common sense and be gentle.

James W. Arnold

I had a lady reptile vet come over to probe one of my adults, she prefered using a cat catheder over the metal probes. At the time, I also had a batch of babies, and she showed me how to sex them using the "popping" method. She said that it could be done on young snakes up to 6 months, I've only done it on new borns though. I feel that it's good to have someone experienced with you when first trying this for any correction. I put a towel around the rest of the snake, because often they will bite you.

I use the method of putting my thumb on the top of the baby above the vent and my index finger on the bottom and gently pull toward the tail. Like was mentioned above, if it is a male you will feel what feels like two BB's pass your fingers. Since you have several boas to sex, After a little practice, you will soon feel the difference. I think this method is safer than popping, and have heard of people popping who did not know what they were doing and could not get the popped out hemipenes to go back in. I think my method is the safest and I have never had one sexed wrong. By the way, you baby in the pic is beautiful. Sharon

I prefer the most non-invasive procedure for boa constrictors and anacondas, and that is sexing by spur morphology. Snakes of these two species over 3 feet can be sexed visually with the unaided eye. With neonates and up to three feet it helps to have some type of magnification, it is definitely a requirement with newborns. The spurs have a completely different structure from one another. Males show the characteristic curved claw shape, which is external and flat against the body. This is opposed to the short conical spike of the female, which is almost round in cross-section and has little, if any curve to it. Normally only the tip of the female spur is exposed. The majority of it is typically recessed in a cavity, and usually requires the surrounding scales to be pulled back to expose the entire spur. Boa constrictor ssp. spurs and green anaconda spurs have similar morphology. Below I have attached a photo of a green anaconda male spur, and that of a female anaconda in the following post, for comparison. As can be seen with the female, the spur in this case is completely recessed, the skin would need to be pulled back to expose the entire conical spike structure. With experience, this technique is 100% accurate for these two species.

Kelly

Male spur of green anaconda

Spur structure of female anaconda. The spur is completely recessed. Most females will show just the tip protruding from the cavity.