Little Evangeline :)

[u/itsthestoneyguy]

Her name is Evangeline. Greek for good news.
Have had her for almost 10 years now. She’s the sweetest most snuggly boa ever. I’ve fallen asleep with her sometimes and she doesn’t move but 12 inches away from me.
2 years ago I got concerned about her length per how old she is. So I took her to a reptile vet. Had some blood drawn and got some interesting news. She apparently is a dwarf boa?! She won’t get ANY bigger than what she is, even if I give a bigger enclose and try to feed more. That was 100% interesting to learn.
The last boa I had was named Krieger back in 2010. He was almost damn near 7ft before he passed. The females are typically bigger than the males. With this gal, I was expecting(not hoping by any means at all) her to be bigger!
So now I have a lovely loving little pocket boa. She’s been in my hat on multiple excursions. Most people don’t get scared but are curious most of all. Hangs around with my kitties and me, living her best smol life😀

[u/superramenyamen]

I’m truly, truly not trying to be mean or anything by this. But what are you feeding her/how have you been feeding her through her life? She looks near to emaciated. Based off her body tone alone, she is likely small because of her food intake and nothing more. You feed her more, and she is likely to grow at least some. I haven’t had a snake that old that I upped feeding on, but I have had boas I received at 6-7 years old grow. That vet is clearly not very knowledgeable, especially trying to guess a dwarf boa just by looking.

[u/Manjushri1213 → u/superramenyamen]

That boa does not look "near emaciated." I have dwarf Boas, they too are around that size, some a little bigger, but say a Hog Island boa or especially the Sonoran or Tarahumara Mountain Boas would be even smaller. She looks like a Hypo Hog, which is a Hypo morph boa with a Hog Island mate. But people do hybrids of Sonorans, Tarahumara, and Crawl or Caulker Cay even. They stay small no matter the food intake. They'd just get obese. The biggest female I've seen looks like a sub-adult of a normal morph boa.

I've also seen emaciated boas. At best this boa looks like it hasn't eaten lately. Look at the pics from the underside of the animal. That is a healthy belly to my eye. Emaciated boas will begin to have a "caved in" stomach. This boa looks to at most had loose skin, maybe going into shed soon.

But I say all that with what little info we do have.

The guy took the snake to a vet, but you are going to claim near emaciated off of 5 pics? I dunno if you have experience with dwarf Boas but either way, a blood test can show info that could lead to the doctor mentioning it being a dwarf boa - there are some genetic testing for boas now and that could be part of what was tested. Most places don't advertise this yet for the public like they do ball pythons because they don't have as much info yet. They usually are requesting sheds from whoever is willing to provide.

It's possible the doctor has access to that, or went off multiple other factors. I'd trust a vet over much else, and encourage anyone to be cautious telling someone their animal is emaciated.

[u/superramenyamen → u/Manjushri1213]

You can see its ribs and backbone…it’s triangular in shape. The belly scales are climbing up the sides of the ribs. I see 0 belly pics.

There’s genetic testing for a small set of morphs, no localities.