Boa Constrictors

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Suborder: Serpentes
Family: Boidae
Genus: Boa
Species: Boa Constrictor

Foound from Argentina to Mexico, the boa constrictor (photo ) lives near water, but can also live in deserts, wet tropical forests, open savanna, and cultivated fields, and from sea level to moderate elevation. Boa constrictors are both terrestrial and arboreal. These snakes are solitary and nocturnal. Like all snakes, they are cold-blooded and their body temperature adapts to the external temperature.

Boa constrictors are pinkish or tan in color, with dark crossbands. The varying patterns of cream, brown, tan, gray, and black with ovals and diamonds offere effective coloration. Sensors on the tongue detect odors while those on the upper lip detect heat, or warm blooded prey.

Boas feed on large lizards, birds, opossums, bats, mongooses, rats, and squirrels. They hide near water and grip their prey when it comes to drink. Boas are nocturnal hunters and uses heat-sensitive scales to locate its prey. The boa constrictor’s referred prey is bats, which they catch by hanging from the branches of trees or the mouths of caves, grabbing them out of the air as they fly by, and killing them by constriction. Their liking for rats earns them a special place in human's tolerance, as they are sometimes kept as house snakes. Once they've eaten, they can go for a week without hunting and eating again.

Boas are not poisonous. They kill by constricting the prey until it can no longer breathe. Like all snakes, they swallow the prey whole, head first. The boa's top and bottom jaws are attached to each other with stretchy ligaments, which let the snake swallow animals wider than itself. Snakes don't chew their food, they digest it with very strong acids in the snake's stomach.

With a life span between 25 to 30 years, boas are related to pythons and anacondas and range in length is from 20 inches (50 cm) at birth ( photo ) to 13 feet (3.9 m) as adults weighing about 60 pounds (27 kg). ( photo ) The longest recorded specimen was 18 feet (5.5 m) long.

Boas have vestigial hind limbs and hiss when threatened.