This is so complicated because Morph Boas can have BCC in them, Sigma, other localities etc. The recent study that got rid of the sub species also only had about 75 specimens, so God knows there could be many, many more species/sub species. (Hog Island comes to mind, the Belize Island dwarfs, the Brazilian and Bolivian BCCs etc and so forth) or different breakdowns. I’d just use the general locality if a locality, or Mixed Locality if a Morph Boa (specifically morph boas, not locality boas that happen to have a morph, like Pure Sonoran Leopard Boas or Pure Nicaraguan Sunglows or something.)
As far as Colombians, they are probably BI if actually pure Colombian. But they may be mixed with BCC, it is possible even if they came from Colombia, farm bred or otherwise, since Colombia does have true BCC from what I understand.
The BI vs BCI thing is basically semantics til we have more specimens from a far, far wider gene pool.
This is my opinion tho, just as an enthusiast of locality boas in particular. Morph Boas are basically 3 species/sub species mixed together (Sunglows and other single genes like RLT/Key West have BCC in them, Leopard from Boa Sigma have been bred into CA and Colombia boas etc)
I don’t know if this is true for boa localities, but for retics, the females have a bigger impact on the babies. For example, a small female paired to a large male will have small babies. But, a large female paired to a small male will have large babies. I don’t know if this is why or not, but it’s a thought I had.
BCC do have bigger babies when they are born. But smaller clutches / litters than a typical size BCI boa.
This picture shows the size difference BCC babies can be. The hypo boa on top is a BCC X BCI and only 1 week old. The normal looking one on bottom is a BCA X BCI and is 11 weeks old.
List it as a boa and in the comments write what the parents are.
No one cares that fires are amarali x imperator or that groovy coral or RLT had Suriname in them generations ago. The % of Bcc or what ever in most is going to be tiny and anything less than 25% isn’t really worth working out.
Pure Boa constrictor constrictor should be labeled as such, obviously.
I list the % of imperator in my leopards as either 75 or 50 so that people know they aren’t pure Sigma. How many actually care because they will be pairing to other imperator, I doubt is many if any of them.
There are definitely some people that will care if fire has amarali in them. As a breeder its best to be upfront and honest as you can because you shouldn’t assume what other breeders plans are.
In response to Dscreef above I think you take my reply completely out of context as I was neither looking for an argument or causing one. All I have stated is fact. There are so many morph boas that have Bcc in them and many people won’t have a clue, especially as most were added generations ago, with some speculation as old breeders won’t say, or denied when questioned. If you don’t know the fire story which you obviously don’t (no disrespect intended) then you don’t know and my answer was informative. No one’s just going to come out with the history of every morph so if you haven’t been around the past 20+ years there will be a lot of history that you and other have missed. If it was massively important breeders would passed the information on, although a lot of it goes missing when web sites close down.
You only have to look at early fires to see the amarali influence. The stone story was a massive scandal and I’m sure some google hunting will come up with various sides of the story.
I do agree with Boaz73 about the first Princess Diamond was a Brazilian Amarali boa. I had a lot of BCA babies years ago. So every time i see a fire boa for sale i know its a fire even before i read the description of it. I see BCA influence in every fire boa.
But i think some people do care about what localities are in there boas.
I myself like morphs and pure locality boas. I don’t have a problem mixing them as long as everyone know what the babies are. This way the buyer will know what he has. So when they breed they can pass the info on. I have produced crosses that look like a pure locality and i don’t want someone selling one of my babies to another person as a pure locality boa. There are breeders out there that only breed pure locality and i dont want one of my babies ruining there pure bloodline.
Yeah you can see the amarali a mile away in a lot of them!
Imperator are very messed up and any non locality without knowing true linage could easily be mixed locality imperator, imperator x constrictor or even sigma x constrictor. If it was 4 or 6 generations ago, no one’s likely to even remember. What people think they have in there boas may not be what they think! Could a great grand partner have been a groovy coral, a Roswell, maybe a Pink Panther, etc. sure it can be good to know, but so much info is lost and really the big guys really don’t care about such things. Back in the early days of morphs the big boa house would keep those mixes quite.If you were wanting pure lines sure you need to be able to trace back, but even then you’re going on the word of the breeder who is going on the word of his breeder…… Chinese whispers comes to mind! People often won’t even tell the true location of a wild caught morph. What we think is the location could be miles away from the truth. These four different locations give as the location of the sigma pied and likely none are correct.
Heck most people don’t even know the true location of crawl caye and it’s not where Russo says it is! Things get muddled up. It’s sad, but it’s not a ideal nor perfect world.
Just enjoy the morphs if that’s what you’re wanting to breed but don’t expect pure except in a few small cases.
I’m a bit late to the convo, mostly because the original topic wasn’t something I could give input on…. but I did want to add that I always list my pairs male x female … it would feel weird to do it the other way around honestly
I think I picked it up from ARPG (art roleplaying game) communities that usually list the virtual breedings as male x female
Usually I list it like this:
1.0 VPI axanthic spider x 0.1 pastel het VPI axanthic
Cool! Thank you, @trnreptiles! The feedback is all very helpful.
And wow! I didn’t know where there was an art roleplaying game community! We dabbled in some D&D and found it super interesting – I’m wondering if it is anything like that. Would you mind sharing more info?
And thank you for the info as well on the breeding listings. As many would agree, most of this stuff is a matter of opinion, and I’m happy to go with the major consensus as that is what will make the most “sense” to the marketplace at this snapshot in time. As trends change, including language and preferences, we’ll do our best to keep up with them!
Otherwise, knowing how things are done across “disciplines” or species helps me have more confidence in our VMB marketing (and breeding!) decisions .
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