Emerald Tree Boa
Corallus caninus (Linnaeus, 1758)
Range: Northern South America
Habitat: Tropical Rainforest, up tp 1000 Meters Elevation
Diet: Small Mammals (Rodents, Bats, Marsupials), Small Birds, Lizards, Frogs
Social Grouping: Solitary
Reproduction: Can breed year round. Seven month gestation period. Liter typically consists of 6-14 young. Eggs are retained inside the body of the mother and then the young are born live. No parental care is provided. Sexually mature at 3-5 years old.
Lifespan: 25 Years
- Adult length about 1.8-2.7 meters. weigh 1-2 kilograms (females are larger than males). Highly developed front teeth are very long, larger than those typically seen in nonvenomous snakes. The head is large and heart-shaped, thought by some naturalists to resemble that of a dog
- The tail is prehensile, allowing the snake to grip branches. Usually found in a characteristic stack of loops draped around a tree branch. Able to climb immediately after birth.
- Background color is emerald green with a yellow underside. A series of jagged white stripes (sometimes one long stripe, other times a broken series of stripes) are on the back. Juveniles are orange or red at birth, turning green at 9-12 months
- Primarily nocturnal. The face has large heat sensors, which are used for detecting infrared heat and catching prey in the dark. Prey is killed with constriction
- This species is sometimes divided into two species - the emerald tree boa and the Amazon Basin tree boa, which is larger and has different scalation patterns on the face
- In zoos, often exhibited alongside the green tree python, which looks and behaves extremely similar to the emerald tree boa, but is not closely related, as an example of convergent evolution
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