In 2009, we decided to reconstruct our boa programs and focus on a few certain patterns and recessives by aquirering a small group of animals from a select pool of breeders. One of those patterns being the Aztec. The Aztec was later found to have an association to a new line of Anerythrism which was unknown to us at the time.
Some time after this initial start up, we grew the babies and bred adults slowly working our way towards creating one of the pinnacles of the boa morphs at the time, the VPI T+ “Snow” boa. In 2012, we had our first litter of Aztecs, where half of which were het for the VPI gene. We continued pairing and raising the babies for the next few years. All the while using the same male Aztec in other breedings, including pairing with a Super Ghost and and an RLT Kahl Albino which resulted in a number of litter over the next few years.
in 2014 we paired 2 holdbacks from the original litter. In this case, we had hoped to do two things. One was to obviously prove out the VPI T+ gene in them, and the other was to compound the unusually high rusty red coloration both animals carried. In 2015, they had their first litter. And in that litter, both parents proved to be het VPI T+ by giving us both Aztec and normal patterned VPI T+ albinos. Also in that litter, we saw something very unusual. There were dark, purplish babies that had completely black eyes!
So began the the inquiries and trying to figure how this happened. It later turned out that the male Aztec was unknowingly het for an Anery known as the Black Eye Anery or “BEA” for short. This was a fairly new gene that was discovered a few years earlier by the breeders where we acquired the male as well as another line of BEA developed by Ralph Davis Reptiles.
Since none of the animals were from the RDR BEA stock, we could not call them RDR BEAs. They remained nameless for a number of years until in 2018, a litter resulted from pairing two of the holdbacks from the 2015 litter and produced the first BEA VPI Snows! Not quite the plan we had in the beginning, but what an achievement to say in the least. So the brainstorming began as to what to call this line of BEA. It wasn’t long before a name was chosen after years of watching The Discover Channel. Learning that one of the most abundant compounds in the universe was also dark and reflected perfectly with the all black eyes. Also, one of the rarest forms of snow known only to exist on Mars was made of Carbon. So the name “Carbon” was used for the BEA, and anything subsequently containing this gene would be called by their existing morph name i.e. Carbon Snow, Carbon Ghost, and so on.
As of 2020, there has been integration of the Carbon gene into many other Recessive and Incomplete Dominant projects. The next few years will be very exciting to witness, and the future is bright for anyone interested in getting into a new and exciting project!
The Future
In 2021 all of the animals from the 2018 Snow litter have matured. At three years of age, we now see how well they maintain their ability to hold on to the color and contrasts. There is zero indications of yellowing or browning out in both the adult visual Aneries and Snows.
Click here to see them as their current state at the time this post was updated July 2021.