Wild Fiji Boas photos posted

Yes, they are normally found in the trees, and are nocturnal. Mine spend all day in a tube or under a hide, then come out and stroll in the branches at night, sometimes bathing in their water bowl.

All the ones I've seen are slender like this, no matter what their length. My babies are feeding on geckos once a week, the adults are taking rats and the local mynah birds about once a month.

PS I may be computer dumb, but even I think drooling on the keyboard would be a bad thing overall....

That black animal is a MUST HAVE !
Have you reproduced any of them ?

I WANT !

I wish.... I also think this is a spectacular snake, and it's a female - I am trying to persuade the owner to breed her.

Unfortunately this is a wild snake in Fiji controlled under CITES regulations so even if I had bred them I couldn't export.

This is the second of this colouration I have seen here though, so although it's not common it's around - I wonder whether any of the Candoia specialists have bred this colour in the US?

Maybe it's worth moving here for?

Nice photos and thanks for posting them.. Though I don't consider myself close to being an expert on Candoia I have kept and bred them in the past. I've never seen nor heard of a black one like that so that is something different you have there..

it is even easier to use photobucket.com to post your photos on sites and in email. More pictures !!!! Randy

Here's one I used to have, female Solomon island tree boa..

I bred only a few of these guys and getting the babies going was a chore, hard to come up with a steady supply of small lizards and frogs around here.. Neat little snakes though.. Randy

Awesome animal,but hardly worth moving into a tourist trap
Please post some more pics,rarely is there anything posted these days that interests me on the snake forums.
But that one is the BOMB !

Please try photobucket.com for your pic hosting.

Originally Posted by Helenthereef

I wish.... I also think this is a spectacular snake, and it's a female - I am trying to persuade the owner to breed her.

Unfortunately this is a wild snake in Fiji controlled under CITES regulations so even if I had bred them I couldn't export.

This is the second of this colouration I have seen here though, so although it's not common it's around - I wonder whether any of the Candoia specialists have bred this colour in the US?

Maybe it's worth moving here for?

I agree, this is one of the best photo posts that I've seen in the past year.

Mitch

Thanks for the nice comments, glad to find this is of interest. More photos of the black morph, which is the one everyone seems most excited about, follow.

I don't know much about breeding snakes (always been a pet keeper, not a breeder) - if we wanted to try and produce black boa babies, can anyone advise on how to work out when a female boa is in season? The black is a female and we have a grey male ... and they are being kept at their normal temperatures, light levels, humidity etc, so I think we shouldn't have too much difficulty. (and then our tourist trap may be worth at least a short visit maybe? )

Hope you enjoy the shots, and not TOO much drooling is produced!
Helen


Black morph reared up

Black morph whole body

Three females: Black, Grey and Brown morphs


Fijian handler with black morph (Yes I wish he wouldn't hold it like that too, we have had words, but he's been bitten by this one a few times; she has a temper).

Hi Randy,

The Solomon Boa is VERY pretty, much more two-tone than the Fiji species, but they must be pretty closely related. Here's a few of my normal brown coloured boas when neonates;





And a pair about a year old



My young Fiji boas are eating geckos, of which we have an unlimited wild supplu, but the older ones have gone onto rats and birds, so it's possible to shift them over.

Do the Solomons boas come in a variety of colour morphs or are they all the grey/brown combo seen in your photo?

Helen

The little bit (very little mind you) I've picked up over the years suggests, (to me anyways) that the various colors found in some Candoia are more of a phase, then a morph, and you may get multiple color phases from a single litter. (Morph being used meaning a proved genetic mutation)

I have never read of any attempts to isolate a single color phase though. Maybe they are carriers of many different genes, and completely dependent upon how the genes pair up, as to what you get. ????


I wish you luck in your endeavors. Sounds like an interesting project for sure. Some pretty neat looking critters right there.