Blood

What Blood looks like

Heterozygous Blood. Single copy of the Blood allele. Enhanced, saturated red and orange coloration compared to wild type. Saddle pattern is present but with reduced contrast as the background color warms. The intensification is noticeable in comparison to non-Blood animals. Valuable building block for combo morphs.

The Blood locus is an incomplete dominant trait in Boa constrictor that dramatically intensifies red and orange pigmentation while simultaneously reducing the dorsal pattern. Three phenotypes exist based on zygosity. Wild type (non-Blood) displays the normal boa pattern with standard coloration. Heterozygous Blood animals (the "Blood" morph) show intensified red and orange coloration with reduced pattern contrast. The saddle pattern becomes less defined against the background, and the overall appearance is warmer and more suffused with red/orange than a normal boa. Homozygous Super Blood animals take this much further: extremely intensified red/orange coloration that can appear almost solid red in some individuals, with the saddle pattern heavily reduced or nearly absent. Super Blood boas are among the most intensely colored boa constrictors in the hobby. Blood is an important building block for combo morphs: Blood x Jungle, Blood x Anery, and Blood x Hypo each produce striking animals with their own established names.

How to identify it: Blood (Bl): Richer, more saturated red and orange than a normal boa. Saddle pattern remains visible but with reduced contrast. Background color is warmer, saddles are less sharply defined. The intensification is noticeable but not extreme in single-copy animals. Super Blood (Bl/Bl): Dramatically intensified red/orange coloration that can approach near-solid in some individuals. Pattern is substantially reduced. The saddles may appear faded or nearly absent against the intensely colored background. One of the most visually dramatic boa morphs. Distinguishing het Blood from normal boas requires either parentage knowledge or side-by-side comparison; the intensification is present but can be subtle. Super Blood is unmistakable.

How Blood is inherited

Blood follows a incomplete dominant inheritance pattern, carried on the Blood allele (locus Blood).

Combo morphs with Blood

• Anery Blood

  Anery Blood combines the Anerythristic recessive with the Blood incomplete dominant trait. Anery removes red and orange pigmentation while Blood increases red/orange intensity and reduces pattern contrast. The interaction produces a striking grayscale to dark animal with modified, reduced pattern. The Blood trait on an Anerythristic background creates a dark, strongly patterned animal. The pattern-reduction effect of Blood combines with the grayscale palette of Anery to produce animals with bold, high-contrast reduced pattern in black and silver.

• Jungle Blood

  Jungle Blood combines the Jungle aberrant pattern trait with the Blood color-intensification trait. The result is an animal with both aberrant, irregular saddle patterning (from Jungle) and intensified, saturated red and orange coloration (from Blood). The combination produces highly individualized animals. Since no two Jungle animals are patterned identically and Blood intensifies the coloration, each Jungle Blood is unique. This is one of the most visually striking two-gene combinations in the boa hobby.