The Turks and Caicos rainbow boa Epicrates chrysogaster is found only in the Turks and Caicos Islands and adjacent islands in the southern Bahamas of the Caribbean. Some anacondas have been known to eat prey as large as a young tapir or even a caiman. Depending on the size of the snake, boas may eat rodents, birds, lizards, frogs, and small to medium-sized mammals like opossums, monkeys, pigs, or deer. Tree boas have pits, or holes, along their mouth that do the same thing, like their relatives the pythons do. This allows them to find prey even in the dark or among dense foliage. Most boas also have special temperature-sensitive scales around their mouth with lots of nerve endings that can sense the heat of nearby wildlife. This way of smelling helps them find their prey. Boas flick their tongue in and out to catch scent particles from the air. They remain still and hidden until a possible meal comes close they then strike forward quickly to catch it. How does the snake breathe while its mouth is full? It has a special tube in the bottom of its mouth that remains open to take in air.Ī hot meal. Boas are ambush hunters. Rhythmic muscular contractions pull the prey down the snake’s throat and into its stomach. The boa then begins the leisurely process of unfolding and stretching its jaw and swallowing the prey whole, usually headfirst.

With each exhale, the snake takes up more space. But a boa doesn’t actually crush the prey and break its bones-it just squeezes tightly so that the prey’s lungs cannot expand, and it suffocates. Putting the squeeze on dinner. A boa is a constrictor, meaning that it grabs its prey with its teeth and quickly wraps its coiled body around the prey and squeezes.

All in all, a boa would rather avoid people than go looking for trouble! The ones that live in forests blend into the leaf litter on the ground or the bark of a tree to stay hidden. The ones that live in dry environments usually hang out in rock crevices or in underground burrows made by other wildlife. But since they don’t have to chase their food, they don’t need to travel quickly.īoas are found in a variety of habitats, including open woodlands, like the rainbow boa, and rocky, semi-desert scrublands, like the Egyptian sand boa. They can’t move very fast, though-only about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) per hour on open ground. This type of movement works on the ground as well as in trees, and boas can even climb smooth surfaces. This is accomplished by stiffening the ribs to provide support, then lifting a set of ventral (on the belly) scales and moving them forward so the loose ends grip the surface, pushing the snake ahead. The straight and narrow. Because of the large size many boas can reach, they move by traveling forward in a straight line, which is known as rectilinear progression. They are not venomous, and many do not live in jungles. That’s probably because these big snakes make a big impression! But boas are usually pretty quiet and calm and don’t deserve their nasty reputation. Not the bad guys. Boas often appear in movies and stories that take place in the jungle, usually as the villain sliding menacingly through the trees. One of the biggest differences is that pythons lay eggs while boas give birth to live young, although some sand boas and the Round Island boa of Mauritius lay eggs. Pythons have one more bone in their head than boas do and some additional teeth, and pythons are found in Africa, Asia, and Australia while boas live on those continents as well as North, Central, and South America. These snakes have some things in common: they are constrictors, killing their prey by wrapping around it and suffocating it, and they are considered primitive snakes with two lungs (most snakes have only one) and remnants of hind legs and pelvic bones.īut they have differences, too. That leaves two groups, the boas and the pythons. The first thing to note is that the anaconda is a kind of boa, not a separate type of snake. Boas, pythons, and anacondas: What's the difference? Because boa constrictors, reticulated pythons, and anacondas are some of the biggest snakes in the world, many people get confused about which is which.

Boa constrictor habitat