Kevin Hit 3.

[CloudtheBoa]

Carpets get plenty long.




And as far as large prey goes, I think there is an adaptation that occurs when the only prey source available is large prey.

A similar and opposite situation that developed with true SD retics. SD retics are smaller because they rely on migratory prey and seasonal changes.

They simply don't have food sources that are frequent enough and large enough to sustain great size.

The island boa species rely on migratory birds and not large mammals as a food source.

Mainland boas most certainly have a wide variety of prey and some of it is quite large.

There is a video of a boa ingesting a large Howler Monkey. (easy to find the video) without much fuss.

BNS also alerted me to some studies that involved rat snakes that became extremely large because of the size of the prey they had available to them.

The size of the prey was the determining factor.

What I gathered was that more frequent, smaller meals did not create the same growth as less frequent larger meals.

I feel the adaptation to eating larger and larger prey creates a different type of growth than staying on small prey more frequently.

Dang that is a decent sized carpet! I truly thought they were the outliers. Maybe in 2 years you all will see me with some carpets.

That’s definitely interesting. I wonder if with time my boas fed conservatively would still attain those lengths, or if they’ll fall short however long a time they’re growing.

Cloud had a lot of extremely large prey as a juvenile (jumbos when he should have still been on smalls for about 6-7 meals), but it was still all I could do to get him to 6’ by 3 years old. At 9 years old he’s only made it to 6’8”, though he grows an inch or two reliably every year. Although I’m sure it’s a useful adaptation I am not willing to push my snakes’ sizes with bigger prey. With how frequently they eat in captivity I feel that would result in a fat snake before a big one, when my snakes are clearly growing steadily even on the smaller prey items. What I don’t know is if they’ll still attain 8’-9’+ sizes, or remain at more reasonable lengths. But that’s not important to me if it means artificially increasing their size.


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