These truly spectacular snakes are baby BRAZILIAN RAINBOW BOAS named Noah & Mrs Noah and they are possibly the most beautiful snakes I have ever kept in my collection.  They were born on September 18th 2008 & July 6th 2008 respectively and are unrelated, meaning that in the future I should be able to breed them successfully.  However,  I will have at least three or more years to wait until they are large enough to breed! 

When I bought Noah in late September 2008 he was only a week old but already about 40 cm long and 44 grammes in weight.  On that same day I weighed Mrs Noah, who was nearly twelve weeks old and feeding really well, and she only weighed 42 grammes and was about the same length!  This is because Mrs Noah came from a very large clutch of quite small babies, whereas Noah came from a much smaller clutch of very large babies!  They have the potential to reach between 1.5 and 2.1 metres long, so watch this space to see how the two of them grow and change in the coming months & years!

As you can hopefully see from these pictures, the skin of a Brazilian rainbow boa is absolutely beautiful and seems to shine with all the colours of the rainbow, hence their common name!  This occurs because there are tiny ridges on their scales which act like prisms, refracting the light and creating this amazing rainbow-coloured effect which I personally find astonishing!

Even though they are usually beautiful and brightly coloured, like all snakes a rainbow boa's skin becomes dull and cloudy as they prepare to shed their outer layer of skin.  This cloudiness is caused by a build-up of fluid between the old outer skin and the new inner skin.  This fluid helps the snake to shed its skin when the time is right, by allowing it to slide off more easily.  Here are some pictures of Noah preparing to shed his skin and looking quite unlike the beautifully coloured snake he is most of the time!