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I had an opportunity to visit Brian Emanuel today to photograph some East African sand boas for an in progress book on Rosy, Rubber, and Sand Boas.
This is one of Brian's F2 rufescens phases.

Posted by: rdbartlett at Fri Nov 12 15:59:08 2004 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ]

I had an opportunity to visit Brian Emanuel today to photograph some East African sand boas for an in progress book on Rosy, Rubber, and Sand Boas.
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RDB,
Are you producing that book? If so, there may be some color variants of C. bottae that may be of interest to you. If and when my son Ryan has his photographs returned by the Utah wildlife agency, the variation in dorsal and ventral has been documented in those photos. Some of those photographs can be observed on his rubbeboa,com web site.

A good percentage of Rubber Boas from areas of Idaho have the normal dorsal brown color but with all orange colored ventrals.
In 2003, I had the opportunity to examine a few of those specimens. Of about 28 specimens found by individuals, I believe 15 had orange ventrals and the others had the normal yellow ventral coloration. Along with the observed ratio, there were no intermediate morphs which suggests a simple Mendelian inheritance pattern.

In May 2003, I found a subadult male boa in Shasta county, Calif. that was basically dark orange (burnt-orange) dorsally with medium orange colored ventrals. I entrusted it to my son in Utah to rear to maturity but it was confiscated by the Utah DWR this past January. We do not know its fate at this point but he and Brad Alexander took photographs of the snake. This past Oct. 16th in the same area, I found an adult female with the exact same coloration.

There also is a mutant form of C. bottae that as adults, are a medium to dark gray dorsally, white ventrally, and with black eyes. I found a couple of such mutants in Oregon in the early 1970's and had a wildtype female produce two wildtype (normal coloration) and three such mutants in a litter produced in 1972.
Via a number of crosses, I determined that the mutation was due to a single recessive gene which I named 'lilac' as the neonates are a very nice shade of lilac when born. With growth, the lilac coloration turns to gray in adults.

What appears to be the same mutation is known to occur in Utah and I have one anecdotal account of an individual observing a similar boa in Washington.

Through carelessness, my line died out but I believe there is a specimen in Utah that is being maintained. The specimen was captured by none other than 'Operation Slither' informant Kerry Crowther, transferred to an individual in Calif., then transferred back to Utah. It is called 'Silver'. A photograph appeared on this forum or in the Kingsnake classified section a couple of years ago or so. My son Ryan knows the individual that is maintaining that specimen. I had traced that specimen as I thought a photograph of the mutant would be a nice addition to Ryan's rubber boa web site.

Richard F. Hoyer