Available


Female — sigbf6010



Belly



Male — sigbm6030

		Solomon Island Ground Boa - Virgin Pair 1 Contrary to popular belief, there is no single "Solomon Island." There are the Solomon Islands however, a vast area of the Western Pacific spanning over one thousand islands including Eastern Papua New Guinea. Obtaining Solomon Island Boas with any type of locality provenance is a very difficult to impossible proposition. Assigning one of these boas to any specific island based on color is problematic as these creatures can occur in a wide array of color and patterns - often on the same island. Some populations, this one for example, have a highly developed, chameleon like ability to change color and shading based primarily on the color of the substrate they are kept on with a secondary emphasis based on mood, temperature, etc. - and other factors known only to themselves. The Speckling Project A few years back I had an opportunity to acquire a group of these boas that came from the same importation and based on what I could see visually, it looked like these animals were possibly collected very near to one another, probably from the same island. The clincher was the unique pattern/color of ventral surface (belly) and lower sides. I had never seen anything like it in over 30 years of looking at these boas. I believe there is a high probability that the animals composing this group were collected from the same island, and more than likely, one of the smaller islands. Take this for what it is. This is not any kind of real provenance but for our future goals it was deemed important and an exceptional opportunity. We've never seen ventral and lower sides colored and patterned like those in this group. The ventral and sides are like a mosaic of brilliant red, black and white dots and splashes. It is a gorgeous trait. As this was more than likely a polygenic trait; our project goal was to selectively breed the group of four and expand upon the wild type speckling already in place. A similar approach has been used while selectively breeding Chihuahuan Lampropeltis knoblochi to great effect. If you examine sigbm6030 closely you can see areas where the ventral/lateral speckling has already broken out dorsolaterally totally without human intervention. I would imagine this has happened naturally in the wild many times over and is just waiting to be "captured" through breeding by some enterprising boaphile. These boas were imported several years ago as juveniles and grown the slow, Vivid way. There have been zero issues with the group. The males will go off feed during what I presume to be the winter breeding cycle. Otherwise these boas must be fed judiciously to keep their body weight down. I have broken this group of 4 into 2 pairs for sale. However, if at all possible it would be most advantageous to keep the group of 4 together for the obvious genetic "leg up" you get with a larger beginning sample size. All of the animals are unrelated to the best of my knowledge. sigbf6010 Sex:         female Weight:    508 g Length:    36" — 91.44 cm Diet:         frozen/thawed small mice sigbm6030 Sex:         male Weight:    300 g Length:    32 in — 81.28 cm Diet:         frozen/thawed small mice $800 pr Color Note The coloration and to a lesser extent, the patterning on this particular strain of sigb is highly dependent upon the color of the substrate they are kept on. The female boa above for example will be light terracotta tones with an indistinct dorsal pattern when kept kept on a light substrate. When kept on a darker substrate, she will develop more saturated coloration with cherry red outlines. The male sigb will develop orange and chocolate overtones when kept on a light substrate while on a dark substrate he can appear a deep chocolate mauve to nearly black and his head takes on the dark look of some soulless creature that recently crawled out of Middle Earth.