About the California boa constrictor
Its homeland is the southwestern United States, northwestern Mexico. Because of their calm nature and small size, pink boas are one of the most popular terrarium animals in the United States.
Typically, California boas do not conflict with humans and rarely bite.
If California boas refuse to eat and shed poorly, the reason for this is insufficient humidity. They need low humidity or they will have breathing problems. They require bathing and spraying.
In captivity, snakes sometimes refuse food for months. However, if they eat well, they shed well and their skin comes off completely.
These boas eat while keeping young mice and gerbils.
Black variety of pink boa
Coconut fiber can be used for bedding; it wets well and remains moist for a long time.
The average size of the animal is 80 cm, but larger individuals are also found.
If you live in an area with high humidity (60%), you should provide good ventilation in the terrarium to reduce the humidity.
Boas eat mice at night.
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Another name for the reptile is the pink boa constrictor. The body of the animal is decorated with longitudinal stripes of brown, cream, black and reddish colors.
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California boas breed easily in captivity. The female gives birth to 3-14 cubs (average 6.5) 18-36 cm long. Young boas become independent immediately after birth. The female does not take part in their future fate. The first molt occurs on days 7-10. During the first year of life, young boa constrictors double in size.
If the boa constrictor has not eaten live food (a mouse) within an hour, it should be removed so that it does not injure the snake.
Boas are bathed in a deep basin with warm water, which is filled to 5 cm. Bathing lasts 10 minutes.
If the humidity is insufficient, it is recommended to put wet sphagnum moss closed in a plastic box and cut a hole in it for the boa constrictor to crawl into.
For the California boa constrictor, a plastic or glass terrarium with a volume of at least 60 liters, with a thick layer of soil, is suitable, since pink boa constrictors love to dig holes. The thickness of the substrate should be 5-11 cm. Hobbyists use white paper as a substrate. The base is wood shavings of cypress and aspen.
When threatened, a boa constrictor may, for the purpose of self-defense, release a substance with a pungent odor.
In captivity it can live 18-30 years.
Family Boas or pseudopods (Boidae)
Subfamily Sand boas (Erycinae)
Genus North American boas (Lichanura)
Size: about 1 m.
Degree of toxicity: non-toxic.
Similar to the three-banded pink boa, but the body stripes of this subspecies are orange or brownish-orange and usually have a distinct border. The eyes are also orange. There are no thermal pits.
Distributed in Mexico (center of Bahia California). Lives on mountain outcrops and lava flows. It feeds on small mammals and birds. Viviparous, in a litter of 3-8 individuals.
Choosing your first snake: instructions for a beginner
Choosing the first snake is a crucial step; a novice terrariumist is still inexperienced and does not have sufficient skills to communicate with snakes, so it would be wise to choose a “snake for a beginner” rather than complex snakes for advanced terrariumists.
Let's take a quick look at the factors you should consider when choosing your first snake.
Size
There are both small snakes and huge snakes up to 10 meters. Of course, it is preferable for beginner terrarium keepers to have the first ones. Small snakes require less space and less food. The bite of a small snake is not as dangerous as the bite of a ten-meter reticulated python. The smallest are sand boas, growing up to 70 cm, and they are also quite easy to keep. Also, the most common medium and small snakes to keep include milk snakes, corn snakes, and royal pythons.
Availability in free sale
There are species that have been used in terrariums for quite a long time. They have been divorced for a long time, there is a sufficient amount of information about them in the public domain. And they are widely available on the market. These are snakes such as the royal python, corn snake, and milk snake. These snakes are preferred as a first choice snake, as opposed to more exotic and rare species.
Aggressiveness
When choosing a snake, you should keep in mind that species differ in their aggressiveness. Garden boas and reticulated pythons are almost always aggressive, but if you want a calm and tame snake, it is better to purchase a corn snake or a royal python.
Availability of food supply
When choosing a snake, you should be prepared that you will have to feed it live food. Snakes do not eat beef or pork. The best choice would be a snake that feeds on rodents, which can easily be found on the open market. Snakes that feed on amphibians or reptiles (the common grass snake) present great difficulties. If you are not ready to feed your snake mice, snakes that feed on snails or insects (grass keel snake) are suitable. However, another danger lurks here, which is outlined in the next paragraph.
"Fragile" snakes
There are snakes that do not tolerate captivity well. These include, for example, the grass keel snake. In domestic practice, almost all snakes did not survive in the terrarium until one year.
Ultraviolet radiation
Snakes are generally nocturnal predators and do not require UV light. However, in some cases (grass keel snake), you should consider purchasing an ultraviolet lamp.
Humidity
Humidity is also an important factor when choosing a snake. So the common grass snake requires high humidity. And often, due to high humidity, the terrarium begins to smell unpleasant, which can stop you from purchasing this snake as your first pet.
There are three most recommended snakes as a first pet: the king python, the milk snake, and the corn snake. You can't go wrong when choosing one of these snakes. A large amount of information about their content is freely available. These are fairly calm and non-aggressive snakes that do not require complex care.
When choosing your first snake, it may be helpful to watch a snake care video to help you learn useful snake handling skills.
The sand boa (Eryx miliaris) belongs to the family of false-legged snakes (Boidae). All false-legged snakes are non-venomous; they suffocate their prey. Among the representatives of this family are both the largest snakes living on Earth - the anaconda and the reticulated python, and miniature ones, such as the sand boa, which we will talk about in this article.
Description of the sand boa
The body of the boa is relatively short and thick, powerful, and not as flexible as that of most other snakes. The body length rarely exceeds 60 cm. The snake’s neck is almost not pronounced, the tail is thick and blunt at the end, about 10 times shorter than the body. The head is somewhat concave from above, and the small eyes look almost vertically upward. Boas have a developed shield at the end of their snout, but not as much as blind snakes. The mouth is located on the underside of the head.
Males and females practically do not differ in appearance.
The general background of the upper side of the body has a varied color – from light sand to dark brown. Against this background, there is a well-defined pattern of brown spots with a light edging, which have an irregular, transversely elongated shape, in places merging with each other, forming uneven zigzags. Dark specks are scattered on the sides of the body. On the short, thick tail, the spots merge into longitudinal lateral stripes. The head has a dark temporal stripe running from the eye to the corner of the mouth.
Among sand boas, melanists are often found, both complete (completely black and purple) and partial (having single light spots).
Where do boas live?
The sand boa is a characteristic representative of the desert fauna of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. In Russia it is known in the Eastern Ciscaucasia and Lower Volga region.
It is not for nothing that it received the name “sandy”, because its life is closely connected with desert sands. It lives in moving dunes and semi-fixed hummocky sands, as well as wherever there is more or less loose soil. Only by chance can it be found on dense substrate, as well as in cultivated irrigated areas. It is distributed mainly on the plains, and only occasionally rises to the mountains, but not higher than 1200 meters above sea level.
The boa constrictor is one of the most widely distributed desert snakes. During one two-hour excursion through the desert you can meet two dozen of these reptiles. In places of greatest abundance, their density can reach one individual per hectare - and this is the highest figure for desert snakes.
How does the sand boa live in nature?
The boa constrictor leads a semi-burrowing lifestyle in the sand. Sand for him is literally his home. It easily sinks into it, drilling and pressing, and easily “floats” at a depth of several centimeters below the surface. When a snake crawls in the sand, you can observe a layer of substrate rising above its body. Where this reptile crawled, a characteristic winding trace remains in the sand in the form of two rollers with a slight depression in the middle.
Sometimes the boa stops and, sticking out only its forehead, eyes and nostrils from the sand, guards its prey. Sooner or later, some lizard approaches the barely noticeable bump. The snake's throw is very swift, and now the victim is already grabbed by powerful jaws, and the muscular body wraps several rings around it. Coordinated and lightning-fast movements seem simply incredible for this reptile, so slow and phlegmatic at first glance. Without waiting for the unfortunate animal to calm down, and without unclenching its deadly coils, the boa begins to adapt to swallowing prey, which can be many times larger than the head of the predator itself, and swallowing turns out to be a not entirely simple process, lasting 20 or more minutes. Sometimes the prey caught is so large that the snake abandons it uneaten.
But the boa constrictor feeds not only on lizards. Its diet is very varied and also consists of mouse-like rodents, small birds, turtles, snakes and bats.
And catching prey from an ambush is not the only way this snake hunts. The boa constrictor searches for prey both on the surface and in the sand, where it may stumble upon a lizard buried to rest. It also examines rodent burrows and eats young mammals in nests. Seeing a potential victim on the surface, he slowly crawls up to her, then from close range he rushes with a lightning-fast throw, grabs him with his jaws and wraps him in suffocating rings, as if he were attacking from an ambush in the sand.
In summer, the boa constrictor is active at dusk and at night, but during the day it takes refuge in shelters. In cool seasons - spring and autumn, it switches to a diurnal lifestyle. The snake does not have its own burrows, and uses empty spaces in the basal hills of desert plants or rodent burrows as shelters.
Boas go into hibernation in mid-late autumn and wake up in the first half of spring. They winter in shelters at a depth of 20-30 cm.
Often, sand boas themselves become victims of other snakes, large lizards (monitors), kites, ravens and desert hedgehogs.
Being grabbed by a person, the boa usually tenses its entire body, and, as if twisting out of the hand, tries to free itself. However, there are also more aggressive individuals. Sometimes a large reptile, taken by surprise, curls up in a ring and rushes at the enemy, clinging to the leg with its teeth. If you manage to pick up such a boa in your hands, it will try to bite and can even cause serious scratches with its sharp, backward-curved teeth. The hooked teeth of this reptile are adapted to hold strong prey, so a sand boa that has clung to a person’s body or clothing sometimes cannot detach itself; it opens its mouth wide and shakes its head. In addition, a caught boa wriggles in your hands and is very difficult to hold.
Due to the secretive lifestyle of boas, little is known about their mating behavior. The breeding season begins in the spring, shortly after emerging from hibernation. In the second half of summer, the female gives birth to live cubs. There are usually 6-11 snakes in a litter, the length of newborns is 12-13 cm. They grow quite quickly and by the second year of life they reach a length of 30 cm, and at the age of 4 years, having reached the length of an adult, they become sexually mature.
Keeping the sand boa in a terrarium
When kept at home, the sand boa, like other members of the genus, quickly adapts, gets used to the hands and willingly eats mice. The terrarium for such a pet must be horizontal, with dimensions of at least 60x40x30 cm. The reptile’s home must have a layer of sand at least 10-15 cm thick so that the pet can burrow into it without hindrance.
A comfortable temperature for a reptile is 25-35°C during the day, at night it is much lower – 20-22°C. A heating lamp and an ultraviolet lamp are required. Humidity is maintained at 50%, and the terrarium must have a humidity chamber or a system for moistening the soil from below so that dry air does not cause difficulties during molting. Also don't forget to put a drinking bowl.
With proper care, the sand boa can live up to 20 years.
In contact with
IUCN 3.1 Least Concern:
California boa, or pink boa constrictor(lat. Charina trivirgata) - a snake from the family Propopods. Reaches 80 cm in length. bluish-gray color with three not sharp longitudinal stripes along the body, with a blunt conical tail. Distributed from Northwestern Mexico and Arizona to Southern California. The California boa constrictor hunts for small rodents at dusk. The female gives birth to up to 6 cubs up to 25 cm long.
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Links
- The Reptile Database:
An excerpt characterizing the California Boa Constrictor
The militia - both those who were in the village and those who worked at the battery - threw down their shovels and ran towards the church procession. Behind the battalion, walking along a dusty road, were priests in robes, one old man in a hood with a clergyman and a chanter. Behind them, soldiers and officers carried a large icon with a black face in the frame. It was an icon taken from Smolensk and from that time carried with the army. Behind the icon, around it, in front of it, from all sides, crowds of military men walked, ran and bowed to the ground with their heads naked.Having ascended the mountain, the icon stopped; The people holding the icon on the towels changed, the sextons lit the censer again, and the prayer service began. The hot rays of the sun beat vertically from above; a weak, fresh breeze played with the hair of open heads and the ribbons with which the icon was decorated; singing was heard softly in the open air. A huge crowd of officers, soldiers, and militiamen with their heads open surrounded the icon. Behind the priest and sexton, in a cleared area, stood the officials. One bald general with George around his neck stood right behind the priest and, without crossing himself (obviously, he was a man), patiently waited for the end of the prayer service, which he considered necessary to listen to, probably to arouse the patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a militant pose and shook his hand in front of his chest, looking around him. Among this circle of officials, Pierre, standing in the crowd of men, recognized some acquaintances; but he did not look at them: all his attention was absorbed by the serious expression of faces in this crowd of soldiers and soldiers, monotonously greedily looking at the icon. As soon as the tired sextons (singing the twentieth prayer service) began to lazily and habitually sing: “Save your servants from troubles, Mother of God,” and the priest and deacon picked up: “As we all resort to you for God’s sake, as for an indestructible wall and intercession,” - to everyone the same expression of consciousness of the solemnity of the coming moment, which he saw under the mountain in Mozhaisk and in fits and starts on many, many faces he met that morning, flared up on their faces again; and more often heads were lowered, hair was shaken, and sighs and the blows of crosses on chests were heard.
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