Species Fact Profile: Emerald Tree Boa (Corallus caninus)

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

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern, CITES Appendix II

•       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