Identifying my red tail

[Justinbolleurs]

Hey there. My friend bought a baby female red tail purposely for breeding and he wants to make sure, so do I, if he's baby girl is a Columbian red tail, if not what else might it be?
Pictures bellow... thanx..

[sirtalis]

Kinda looks like a columbian boa, but without lineage info there really is no way to tell fyi, a columbian "redtail" boa is actually just a columbian boa or common boa lol could he ask the breeder what the parents were?

[Justinbolleurs]

How would I know if it's a BBC Columbian or and bci columbian?

[SnoopySnake]

Generally BCC will be sold as BCC, and not BCI because BCC's are worth more. I don't think yours is a BCC. Also without proper lineage information it is impossible to say what they are, all you can do is make guesses.

[Nightflight99]

Originally Posted by SnoopySnake

without proper lineage information it is impossible to say what they are, all you can do is make guesses.

This is spot-on. Both taxa are wide-ranging and contain an incredible amount of diversity, so it is literally impossible to make a reliable determination of what it is without any locality or lineage data. When you see people online "identifying" boas based on appearance, be aware that they're merely guessing, based on what snakes from a particular area have been known to look like. This is essentially analogous to looking at random pictures of strangers whom you know nothing about, and then guessing where they are from--you might get it right every now and then, but there are going to be lots of completely wrong answers.

There is a way to do this genetically, but you would need to have specific gene fragments sequenced and phylogenetically analyzed.

I know this likely isn't the answer that you were hoping for, but take all opinions on an unknown boa with a grain (or three) of salt.

[Andy_G]

Not a BCC, or at least not a pure BCC, that's all you can really know. I'd label it as a colombian BCI.