Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Okay, I need to stir the pot on something. What is a pure Central American boa? Wouldn’t that still constitute a mutt? If I bred a Suriname to an Argentine would that be a pure South American boa? I have heard people say “it’s pure C.A. then turn around and slam someone who breeds a Suriname to a Columbian boa and call that a mutt and even go to the extremes by saying that it’s unethical to conduct such a breeding. So I guess my question is….it’s okay to cross Central American localities together. And call them Pure? But breeding any of the South American boa’s together results in mutts.

I’m interested in your opinions.

James W. Arnold

Good post, I am interested in seeing what people say.
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"Life is a Safari"

I'm relatively new to the boa world, but I've been hearing this subject for several months now in the GTP community...

Unless you brought the animals into the country yourself, or have paperwork goign back to where they came from, and it's somebody trustworthy, you can't actually call it a locality, just a locality type. If you have 2 different known locality animals, and breed them, the offspring ARE mutts...but not mutts at the same time. A south american locale to a south american locale produces "south american boas".

Just my $.02

Chris
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1.1.0 Irian x Jungle Carpet Pythons
1.2.0 Black Rats- Robert, Cady, Kylie
1.2.0 Albino FL Kings-Nick, Jessica, Ashley
1.1.0 Crimson Corns-Kane, Ruby
0.1.0 Het-Crimson Corns-Lola
0.1.0 White-Sided/Pos Het Albino Black Rat-Lita
1.0.0 Albino White-sided Black Rat-Rey
0.1.0 Albino/Het White-sided Black Rat-Stacey
1.2.0 Creamsicle Corns-Vince, Trish, Torrie
0.1.0 Fl King-Bonnie
1.0.1 Green Tree Pythons Biak-Brandon, Aru-Orochimaru
1.0.0 Flame X Blood Bearded-Ruff
2.4.0 Ball Pythons-Kritsy, Gretchen, Alexis, 100% het for albino balls- Naruto, Hinata, 66% het VPI Axanthic-Sasuke
0.1.0 Red-tail Boa-Xena
0.0.1 Savannah Monitor-Izzy

The endless politics of Boa...
It would be a South American, but that is a distinction that means nothing really. Just like all others.
Locality vs. Taxonomy vs. Marketing, in any order. What a mess!
Can you expect any more from people?

I think it's all good. Humans are destroying their environment, so I understand why some people want to keep things "pure". Whatever "pure" is. On the other hand, humans are destroying their environment, so it is fortunate that Boas are bred in captivity at all. There are many, many species that are not so fortunate.
Would you rather have no Boas at all (extinction), or a mutt from one of the Americas?
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sounddjinn@yahoo.com

Things always get cloudy just before transformation.

Good point. And humans are destroying their own enviornment. Who's gonna captive breed them?

Quig

I'm looking forward to the answers you may get on your question regarding the 'Pure' Central American boas in the market.

To your other assertion, that any boa originating south of most of Panama (or in SOUTH America) might then be bred together producing Pure SA snakes.. I ask that you consider that in that example you are talking about at least 5 different subspecies of Boa, not simply exactly where they were collected.

You are not really comparing apples to apples in the two situations.

Good luck figuring this one out.

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Gus
A. Rentfro
RioBravoReptiles.com
www.riobravoreptiles.com

"Quality is not an accident. Perfectly healthy animals are a minimum requirement.. everything else is just salesmanship" gus

That is a good point Gus(the 5 sub-species), however, if going strictly on the sub-species level, Imperator is fairly vast and breeding say a Hog Island to a Colombian could be considered "pure" imperator. Our point is that there are locale variations within "central america" regardless of being generically blanketed under Imperator, and I'm sure of all people you can attest to that. So our generic comparison is calling any S. American breedings "pure S.A's" and vice versa. Hopefully that makes sense, as your one of the last guys I want to debate locale issues with.....I'd LOSE-lol, thanks for your input Gus, take care!

Paul

Sometimes I have trouble explaining my point of view, and perhaps I misunderstand your ideas.. but this one seems straightforward..

You can breed all the CA imperator together and get imperator.. but you can't breed two different subspecies together and call them pure anything..

When you breed a Hog Island (imperator) to a mainland imperator or another island form of imperator you are creating products that could not occur in nature, whether or not they are of the same genus, species and subspecies.. in any discussion involving locality these can not be correctly termed PURE.

The same thing should probably be considered with mainland populations of imperator.. we can debate how much a boa in southern Belize may be different from one in western Costa Rica, or whether the terrain encourages or inhibits the free exchange of genetics and on ad-infinitum.. But in my mind a boa from Sonora or Sinaloa Mexico, bred to a Costa rica snake is also not any kind of PURE.

You can decide for yourself where to draw the line but I think it dishonest to say there is no such line, or point at which animals should be considered to be of different origin.

I'm not after an argument with you or anyone.. these are my opinions and they explain some of my philosophy about boa populations and how captive products should be viewed and catalogued relating to locality and the responsibilities of people interested in being in that market..

Personally I'm at a loss to understand what the importance might be of determining the locality or subspecies of a multi-generational MORPH project.. another fight about proprietory rights?

Good luck to everybody.

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Gus
A. Rentfro
RioBravoReptiles.com
www.riobravoreptiles.com

"Quality is not an accident. Perfectly healthy animals are a minimum requirement.. everything else is just salesmanship" gus

Well, that all made sense to me, and though some things might be lost in translation, I think it's safe to say we agree. Personally, I don't see many people buying morphs for the locale. Yes, to some extent they do such as the Hypo Sonorans. When our motleys were originally purchased they were bought as simply Central American, no specific locale. Then we learned the breeding was the original Central American(still no locale) motley female bred to an EBV Red Group male. At this time, I said this WILL become an issue when the time comes, and I KNOW who will make it an issue. I wish I would've bet a million dollars on it because I could've cashed in this year! Things played out as I expected and it all goes back to my comment about those living in glass houses throwing stones. The locale specifics generally aren't an issue until it becomes what seems to be simply a "competitive" edge. Something like...."Oh there's are junk because they're not "pure", neither are mine if you ask, but if you don't....just focus on THEM". I guess the best thing you can do is laugh at it all and go on! Thanks again for the comments Gus, take care!

Paul

leave all morphs out of locale debates. Very few are traceable, and of those, they have been bred to other locales to get different results.

One of the first Nicaraguan Tpos breedings was to a CanCun.
Hypos from "supposedly" Panama to Colombians.
C.A. (where) Motleys to EBV Red.
El Salvador Bloods to Salmon.
I personally like them all, some more than others of course.

If you like the results of the morph, get it and breed it to what you want to get your results. As long as people don't try to pass uncertain things off as true locales, I don't see a problem.

A Pure Locale animal is one collected with accurate information, with proper documentation or from the offspring of such lines.

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice if it were the case. People however don't leave morphs out of the debates! Chris, I know you like to try and keep track of everything, but trust me you really have no clue of the things we dealt with over our Motleys. Some things go on outside of the public and what little you may hear is what that person chooses to tell you. On that note, I'm going to choose to not go into any details in a public forum. I know for a fact though, anything you may think you know about our breeding hasn't come from James or myself, therefore you do not know the entire story if you know it at all. Take care!

Paul