hey everyone so i'm going to do kind of a second part of a mini series i guess we could call it
of pythons and boas or just different reptiles or snakes that you may have never heard of
and this one i'm going to do five boas unlike the last one that we did which was five pythons
that you may not have heard of so with me today is lily she's a dumerils boa which
i imagine most people have heard of but we're gonna start this off with kind of her cousin
which you may not have ever heard of what are you doing you weirdo so the first one
is the malagasy or madagascar ground boa and while yes she is a ground boa and she is from madagascar
there are actually two different species in the same genus which i'm not going to try to murder
the pronunciation of so i'll just put it up right here so in madagascar there are two species of
completely groundboa of this genus one is the malagasy or madagascar ground boa the other is
the dumerell's boa so the island of madagascar is a really cool crazy place that has a bunch
of different ecosystems all across a very small actual like amount of geographical range and area
so for the most part the dumeril's boas which are actually the smaller of them i inhabit more
of like the southern southwestern a little bit drier a little bit more arid obviously there's
still you know a subtropical species so it's still fairly humid and you know they're not going to be
out basking in a desert rock like you would imagine like a bearded dragon or something like
that even then but we're not going to go up around that route and then the other one the malagasy
ground boa are in kind of the more northern parts of the island where it's a little bit
more tropical a little bit cooler much more humid so with that being said the malagasy ground boas
they're pretty distinctive like when you first like if you don't if when you just kind of first
glance at them they don't look that different but when you actually take a second to look at the
differences there is quite a bit of difference between them number one being just their size
so the dumerell's bose they normally around six to seven and a halfish feet like a big big female can
maybe hit about eight feet um she's probably about six ish right now you know she's slow grown and
we didn't get her until she was an adult anyway so we don't really we're not entirely sure number one
how even old she is and number two what like how she was fed during her you know formative years
the other and then the malagasy ground bows which are the actual focus it's just she's an on me
so it's hard not to talk about her directly are much larger they normally attain lengths of eight
to ten feet so much longer bigger snake they're actually the biggest snake on the island period
another one is their coloration and pattern is a little bit different theirs is not quite as
modeled as this one they're a little bit more uh they're still very good at camouflage hiding in
the leaf litter and waiting for kind of ambush wait and strike as prey comes along things like
a lot of bowed species are but it's a little bit more solid color and their color is a little bit
richer it's a little bit warmer more pinks and orange kind of hues as to more these guys are
just the kind of the solid brown but still they have this really cool pattern built in there
another thing is that their heads are a little bit more pointed dumeral's bose as you can see
here they kind of have a pretty blunted snout the malagasy ground boas in general they have
a little bit more point it's still not like as triangular as like the boa imperators and
boa constrictors that we're used to seeing on a regular basis but they still look really cool
so the next one on this is actually part of the same family but entirely different genus and
that is the senzenia family and these are because i'm going to stick with the theme the madagascar
ground or tree boas or the malagasy tree boas so malagasy that's just how we kind of shorten
or colloquially uh refer to madagascar endemic species so these guys are really cool they're not
so asterisk on this one so they're called tree bows because a lot of times
during the day they're found in trees and shrubs found near a river and again similarly to the
malagasy ground boas and the dumeris bows there are two kind of separate subspecies i don't know
if they have full species classification for yet taxonomy is kind of a giant pain in the butt right
so there are basically two species that again are also kind of broken up geographically there is the
matagarensis which are kind of the more greenish hued ones they're usually a little bit smaller
they're found in the northern more humid parts where the same as the malagasy ground bowler found
and then the other one is the voltanensis or similar to that and that is found more
closer to where the dumeral's bows are found the southern southwestern part where it's a little
bit drier it's a little bit more arid a little bit warmer they're a little bit larger and they have
a little bit more of a brownish shoe but their actual pattern doesn't really change a whole
lot which are these really cool kind of triangular black and white uh i don't really want to say like
oculus is kind of like you know like an oscar or like the little like rosette things but they
have a really cool pattern broken up on them and their actual pattern doesn't change just between
the two i think sub species i'm just gonna stick with subspecies for the purposes of this are a
little bit different size and a little different different colored as their kind of background
pattern or background color i should say so the reason why i kind of made a bit of a word fumble
at the beginning about them being tree bows is that actually a lot of their predatory behavior
is mostly documented at night like most snakes they're nocturnal or active at dawn and dusk being
crepuscular so when they're actually actively hunting looking for food it's usually at night
and it's more on the ground which is possibly why they're a little bit more heavy body than you'd
see in a lot of you know when you typically think of arboreal snakes their actual body shape might
be a little bit closer to what we would think of like kind of like a carpet python where there's
semi-arboreal where they're very comfortable trees and they'll hang on trees for long periods of time
spending the days hiding away from predators in the trees but then actually hunting for food down
on the ground which makes their diets a little bit more varied so they'll be looking for rodents as
well as for birds and other lizards and other things like that as well as i assume probably
some small lemurs like mouse lemurs and things the next one up is another interesting snake
and we're now finally moving away from south america and that is the argentinian rainbow
boa so if any of you snake aficionados out there you've probably heard of the brazilian rainbow
one of the you know most beautiful snakes on the planet as well as their cousin the colombian
rainbow boa there's actually another species which is from argentina the argentinian one
so kind of the main difference between those and the other two is not number one their geographical
range and like their dna and things like that but they're a little bit more slender bodied
and their color is a little bit different so the brazilian rainbow bows that's that really
nice rich red color the colombian bows they have a wide variety of patterns and morphs although
the brazilians are starting to establish a few as well but they're usually a little bit more orange
in color not as deep red as they're kind of like base one the argentinians they're actually kind of
more of like a tannish gray color kind of like a paler color which looks really cool but they
still have that beautiful uh that beautiful rainbow luminescence not luminescence um
well i'm totally stumbling over that um iridescence there we go i get there eventually
that beautiful rainbow iridescence when the rain when the sun hits them and their skin reflects
that iridescence really well which is why they get their name rainbow so the argentinians the care
for them is pretty much the same as you would for an art or a brazilian or a colombian rainbow boa
you know a four by two i think is probably a minimum size for an adult because you know
they'll still get four and a half to six feet long they're a little bit slender bodied so
they're a little bit thinner not like that they're very heavy body to begin with compared to like
an imperator or constrictor but they still get you know four and a half to six feet long still
fairly arboreal but they're a little bit slender a little bit more boil so maybe give them some
more branches and perches at least a four foot enclosure make sure you keep that humidity up
but not like damp and stagnant because that can lead to bad things like that as well as um you
know just basic husbandry things like that if i'll at some point do a whole species spotlight about
rainbow boas in general i just want to talk about the argentinian ones because they're just
kind of unheard of and even when i first came across them i was like wait what now
after that comes an interesting one which is it's not one specific snake it's actually a
small group of them and those are the tracky boas or the eyelash pose so here lily you're kind of
wrapping around my neck a little bit there um the eyelash boas are a group of boas from
one specific genus which again i'm not gonna try to butcher their name so i'll put it up right here
these guys are actually more of the true dwarf boas so when we you know when you think about
like all the different localities and stuff of the imperators like the terrahuma mountains and
like the nigerians they're not nigerians um a lot of the central american localities they call them
dwarf boas these guys are actually true dwarf boas because they're actually an entirely different
species and genus whatsoever in fact they're not even really true boa constrictors or boas
in general they're boa type snakes but they're kind of like uh adjacent to their their actual
closest relatives are a type of pipe snake which is closer to a collubrid snake when we think about
the kind of basic classifications of snakes of boa python collubrid and then you know the venomous
ones it's actually a little bit more complex than that kind of base generalization and patent
grouping that we do and i'm gonna do a whole other video that talks a little bit more about some boas
and pythons that are uh a little bit harder to classify when it comes to that but these guys are
really cool so they're called eyelash boas and they don't all have the distinctive eyelash um
formation as some of the species do but they have kind of like the crested geckos
they have that cool like little ridge over their eyes that gives them their distinctive
name these guys are found in the new world so you know central south america mostly on islands
in like the caribbean down into south america mostly island locality type snakes these guys
are really cool for a number of reasons number one is they have like 800 names they're different
tree snakes they're ground snakes they're both snakes the water snakes their eyelash bows their
tracky bows the dwarf bows all of them describe basically the same snakes just kind of depending
on who it is that you're talking to another are you going for the clock of course you are
another thing is that they have a bunch of really weird adaptations that people normally
don't associate with snakes the first of which is that they have this adaptation made very famous by
the horned lizard which is auto hemorrhaging so as a defense mechanism the horned lizard
will actually shoot blood its actual blood from their eyes as the defense makes it as a
defense mechanism to deter predators these guys do something very similar they don't actually visit
like physically shoot them out and project it but they will auto hammer from the nose from the mouth
from their cloaca and from their eyes their eyes will kind of like it'll enlarge a little bit
because there's that skin and scale that the scale that covers their eyes that will actually enlarge
and turn red because blood will build up there and it will actually kind of start to seep out
and it's supposed to be a deterrent um i don't exactly know how effective that is but it would
probably freak me out if i just saw a snake start to do that on my own um they're not widely captive
bred or kept as far as i'm aware at least in the united states but i think it'd be really cool
to get a hold of either a long-term captive or i don't think anyone's breeding them it'd be really
cool to get some of those in the hobby oh one more last little really cool thing about these guys
um they change color so we all think about like you know the chameleons changing color
and there's the myth about their moods or whatever um but it's really more of a temperature thing
and a territorial hormonal thing it's not just it's sorry the myth of they blend in with their
background not with their mood the mood's a little bit closer sorry about that that was
bad but these guys not the doom rolls bowl lily but the tracky eyelash bows can change color
and the way they do that is with these really cool light absorbing pigment cells that will
effectively change their entire skin pigmentation from a light silvery white at night to kind of a
tannish dark gray brown during the day and they think that the reason for that is that lighter
colored objects absorb heat and light a little bit slower than darker objects so you know like you
don't wear black in the sun because you get really hot that kind of a thing well at night if it's a
lighter white colored object once it's absorbed that heat it takes longer for that heat to escape
so they think that the reason why at night they're the lighter color it's to that way be able
to hold on to that internal temperature longer because they're exothermic they have to take in
heat from their surroundings they are not like mammals and birds that just do it on their own
and so that's why they possibly think they do that so really cool species of snake
so to kind of round this up we're going to finish with another kind of grouping of snakes and that
is another type of boa bowid species and that is candoya so candoya is a genus of species another
kind of dwarf boas which again are they're not close or related to like the tracky boas
but they're another dwarf species that aren't very closely resembled to like the traditional you know
tree boas or imperators these guys are like the viper boas the solomon island ground and trebo
is those type of snakes they're really cool they have a bunch of really cool adaptations number one
is their basic biology and physiology of how they actually look i think is another one of those
where it's very similar to mimicry where they look very close to adders or a venomous snake
that a lot of predators will leave alone based on what they look like because they know that those
are animals that could effectively harm them or you know kill them because of their venomous bite
similar to corn snakes milk they're not corn snakes coral snakes being the venomous lapid
whereas milk snakes and some king snakes will have mimicry for those as well so it's a really
cool little thing they're a fun little snake they're brought in fairly regularly through
imports which i'm not super happy about but a lot of people are starting to breed them more
captively now which is really really cool they have an amazing amazing pattern there's several
different colors of all the different species and it's all really great for camouflage for
blending in with the leaf cutter relief color and the vegetation on the ground like these guys
with the exception of the you know like the solomon island and those type of island locality
tree boas they're all pretty much on the ground sedentary animals and even then this the tree bow
as well kind of similar to the malagasy tree bows will be in the trees during the day and it might
come down the ground to actually feed so hopefully you enjoyed this video hopefully i didn't stutter
too much i know i fumbled a little bit a little out of practice doing videos it's been
a heck of a year so far so getting back into the swing of it hopefully you enjoyed this video let
me know if there are any of these snakes that you didn't in fact know existed before now um you know
doom robot doesn't count but let me know if there any that you didn't hear about or if there are any
other type of snakes or type of snakes that you would want to see similar to like the pythons
or this video if you have any questions let me know down in the comments hit us up facebook
instagram email me at jzsreptiles@gmail.com for any questions comments um oh she's going for the
clock she's going for the clock and i hope you're having a great day and we'll check you next time