Blood gene question

Here are a few "preview" shots I took with my phone of the "male." I use that term loosely because the pair was supposed to be from the same litter but this is the larger of the 2, with the much more prominent head, almost invisible spurs, and even though false negatives can happen with palpation or probing and "he" stays very tense, I feel no sign of hemipenes. I feel no hemipenes in the "female" either, but "she" has prominent spurs, less overall size, and a less prominent head compared to body size/length. I also know none of these things are necessarily absolute indicators of gender, but it does make me question the claimed genders at least as much as the genetics.

I'll be passing more photos of both from my wife's camera either tonight or tomorrow once we upload them to my pc.

As promised, here are a few pictures of the "female" taken with a decent camera. The coloration is fairly accurate in these. Depending on the light, this one can appear a bit more grey in its background coloration. In afternoon sunlight it shows more of the brown tones you can see here.

Here are some more pictures of the "male" taken with the same camera a few minutes later. Once again, the color is fairly accurate depending on the light you are looking at it in.

Any comments as to what I've got here since I got the pictures posted? To me it does seem the "male" is definitely blood. Just browning out pretty well already. I have been continuing the mite treatment on them and have been avoiding handling them to help keep any stragglers from spreading to my other snakes, so I don't have any other pictures yet. I can take more if requested in a couple weeks when I start to handle them regularly, provided the mite treatment is successful. I plan on trying to handle them as much as they will tolerate a soon as I can since their temperament is terrible. I don't think I've ever kept or caught anything as vocal and testy as these two. Well... anything non-venomous that is. Last week after taking those pictures I had them in a couple totes out on my porch to feed them while I treated their tubs again and they were hissing and striking the sides of the smaller totes at me while I was about 15' away! It took them at least 30 minutes after being put back in their normal homes for them to calm down.

The animal in the picture is not a hypo, so it's not a het plasma (hypo het blood and anery type 2). If it is het pewter and the other animal is het plasma, they can still produce plasmas, but if both look like that, you won't get plasmas. Being dark like that does not mean the animal is 100% het blood, it just suggests that it is from a blood breeding, the blood boas having originated with dark El Salvadorean animals. It could just as easily be a 66% possible het from dark het parents, which means that it may not be a het at all. You won't know until you breed it it.

Originally Posted by elena

The animal in the picture is not a hypo, so it's not a het plasma (hypo het blood and anery type 2). If it is het pewter and the other animal is het plasma, they can still produce plasmas, but if both look like that, you won't get plasmas. Being dark like that does not mean the animal is 100% het blood, it just suggests that it is from a blood breeding, the blood boas having originated with dark El Salvadorean animals. It could just as easily be a 66% possible het from dark het parents, which means that it may not be a het at all. You won't know until you breed it it.

There are 2 animals pictured. Just in separate posts.

Do you not think that the one that I have posted as "male" appears to be a visual blood?

Ok, I see both posts now. I'm not sure if those are visual bloods, I thought all visual bloods had dark eyes. I can see that neither is hypo. So I don't think you can get plasmas, even if both parents are visual bloods. Final opinion: regardless of whether or not the animals are bloods or het blood, they aren't hypo so they can't produce plasmas. So they were misrepresented.

Originally Posted by elena

Ok, I see both posts now. I'm not sure if those are visual bloods, I thought all visual bloods had dark eyes. I can see that neither is hypo. So I don't think you can get plasmas, even if both parents are visual bloods. Final opinion: regardless of whether or not the animals are bloods or het blood, they aren't hypo so they can't produce plasmas. So they were misrepresented.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions on neither being hypo. There just too much black pigmentation.

On the matter of the eyes, I have read that as well. I can say that in the pictures "his" eyes appear a little lighter than in person, but "he" shed a few days after that. Honestly, I didn't even see "him" go through the blue phase, or I would have specified "he" was in shed. I just had them out today for another cleaning and mite treatment and noticed the eyes on that one are a pretty dark gray. It's quite striking in person after the shed. I wonder if it really is het for something else if that might be effecting them. I do still think "he" is probably blood, based on coloration.

The reason I repeatedly used quotes on the gender above is that I did confirm today that the lighter one is a male, even though it was sold to me as the female. I clearly felt the hemipenes roll under my finger during palpation 3 times in a row. I did not, however feel any sign of hemipenes with the darker one even though "he" was markedly more relaxed than the lighter one.

I was pleasantly surprised with their behavior today vs last time I had them out. The now confirmed male was still pretty flighty and did strike once, but no hissing at all from him. The darker one still showed that it was a bit nervous and tense, but barely showed any defensive body language and seemed to do very well with being handled a few minutes after I got it out. Still nowhere near as relaxed as my female hypo, but still a massive improvement. Hopefully this trend continues.

Originally Posted by wvaherp

On the matter of the eyes, I have read that as well. I can say that in the pictures "his" eyes appear a little lighter than in person, but "he" shed a few days after that. Honestly, I didn't even see "him" go through the blue phase, or I would have specified "he" was in shed. I just had them out today for another cleaning and mite treatment and noticed the eyes on that one are a pretty dark gray. It's quite striking in person after the shed. I wonder if it really is het for something else if that might be effecting them. I do still think "he" is probably blood, based on coloration.

Looking at other pictures of blood boas, I can't find any where the eyes are as light as this one has, regardless of carrying other genes (whether co-dom, het for another recessive, or homozygous for another recessive). So who knows at this point. I know the closest thing I can find coloration wise is blood, which would make sense if the breeder wasn't completely full of it. I am excited to see how they turn out as they grow up and hopefully what they produce.

As someone who has bred blood boas, bloody hypos, plasmas, and pewters, I seriously question whether that male is a blood. He does have a sort of color wash on him and older bloods can wash out pretty badly and don't turn colorful. My biggest question is the eyes. Every blood boa that I have seen has almost unicolor dark eyes. I did an image search for blood boas just to get an idea of what you're talking about there and to see if my preconceived notion needed to be challenged and I saw a lot of animals that were not blood but did have a lot of color. Personally, if I were to make a statement, I would say that while he's interesting looking, he's not a blood.