Arabesque Boa Constrictors
A visual Arabesque carries bold black speckling over narrow, connected saddles on a light chocolate ground, with a heavily black-marked belly and black tail blotches. Breeders have paired Arabesque to Arabesque for years without confirming a homozygous super, so do not expect to find one for sale.
About the Arabesque gene
Arabesque is a boa constrictor gene that lays bold black speckling over the pattern, and one copy is enough to show it. Steve Hammond of Exceptional Exotics proved it out in the late 1980s. No homozygous super has ever been confirmed, and the gene has no known relationship with any other boa gene.
Appearance
A visual Arabesque has intense black speckling across the body and narrow saddles that join up rather than sitting apart, over a light chocolate ground that throws the pattern into heavy contrast. The head carries the same speckling, the belly is strongly marked in black and the tail blotches are black. Hammond also bred a second line, Sunburst Arabesque, with little to no black speckling and intense orange, pink and gold tones in its place, so not every Arabesque looks like the classic high-contrast animal.
Genetics
Arabesque is dominant, so one copy produces the pattern. Older hobby writing calls it co-dominant, but what a second copy does has never been pinned down. Breeders including Hammond himself have paired Arabesque to Arabesque for years, and litters have included animals put forward as possible supers, but none has been confirmed as a distinct, homozygous Super Arabesque. Arabesque sits on no allelic complex, and despite the visual comparison that keeps coming up, it has no known relationship with Keltic, Aztec or Raptor. Avalanche pairs it with Albino (Kahl) and Anerythristic (Type 1), and Motley Besque pairs it with Motley (Colombian).