Het-Caramel-Albino Boa Neonates

The VPI caramel-albino appearance produces very big and healthy babies. The babies pictured here are one-day-old, brand new neonates. They all grow up to be very good looking snakes. [next paragraph] When we first got the caramel-albinos and their siblings, now about 10 years ago, and then we began to breed them, we just saw the babies as either albino or normal. However, as the years have gone by and we have seen several litters of babies from different animals in the lineage, we have noted several characters of color and pattern that seem to be due to single mutations. [next paragraph] This is a good picture of the "normal" appearances that occur in the VPI caramel-albino lineage of boas. First, there are two distinct colors that occur--the baby on top is a "normal" while the babies beneath are "pink-panthers. The normal baby will grow up to be a very good-looking normal Colombian boa constrictor; the pink pathers will grow up to be very pale adults with reduced speckling and a distinct pink blush to the face and sides. [next paragraph] Second, the middle baby has what we would consider to be a "normal" pattern. However, the top baby and the bottom baby have an unusual chain pattern where the dorsolateral projections from the dark saddles connect all down the edge of the back. This also seems to be an all or none condition, and we are fairly certain that this will be demonstrated to be an inheritable pattern mutation.

Tracy - tbarker@beecreek.net