Available


Male— sigbm6059



Female — sigbf6107



Female

Solomon Island Ground Boa - Virgin Pair 2 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. sigbm6059 Sex:         male Weight:    259 g Length:    30 in — 76.20 cm Diet:         frozen/thawed small mice sigbf6107 Sex:         female Weight:    745 g Length:    41in — 104.14 cm Diet:         frozen/thawed medium mice $900 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 pictured above (sigbf6107) can undergo rather extreme color changes. Keeping in mind that this lovely boa is nearly solid white when at its happiest, there was one frantic hour when this girl was thought to have escaped - when it had actually never moved, having morphed into a distinctly striped, black and ash gray snake with many pattern elements that were "not there" before. The ventral/lateral speckling is mostly white on this boa and shows rather poorly against her light background. You can this speckling best on her lower sides in the full view photo. They appear visible here because her background color tone during this photo is a bit darker than usual. There is some very light, bright orange speckling, very little black speckling at all and the white speckling on the ventrals simply disappears into the white background of the ventrals. When this snake becomes very pale, the lateral speckling disappears altogether.