40 Fun Facts About Boa Constrictor

English speakers call the boa constrictor by the very same two words biologists use as its what?

Scientific name and everyday label are both Boa constrictor, which almost never happens with animals. Most species get a separate common label, as the lion does beside Panthera leo.

Researchers monitoring prey in a boa constrictor's coils found the squeeze kills mainly through which effect?

Its blood flow stops within seconds, starving the brain of oxygen, so the prey blacks out far faster than it could ever suffocate.

In The Little Prince, the narrator's childhood drawing shows a boa constrictor that has swallowed which animal?

An elephant is inside the snake, but every grown-up who sees the picture takes it for a hat.

A boa constrictor decides when to release its grip by sensing which sign of life fading in its prey?

Its heartbeat tells the snake when the job is done, and letting go early matters: the effort of constricting can push a snake's metabolism up sevenfold.

The small claw-like spurs beside a boa constrictor's vent are the last visible remains of which ancestral body parts?

Hind legs survive only as these spurs, which a courting male still puts to use, gripping and stroking his partner with them.

Which giant, the heaviest snake on Earth, belongs to the same family as the boa constrictor?

Green anaconda and boa constrictor are both boas, and the two get mixed up: a record 18.5-foot "boa constrictor" turned out to be one of its giant cousins.

Which extinct snake, dug from a Colombian coal mine, was hailed as the largest ever found?

Titanoboa was a giant boa of roughly 60 million years ago, up to 42 feet long and perhaps a tonne in weight, as much as a small car.

In parts of South America, people welcome boa constrictors into their homes to keep down which pests?

Rats are a favourite meal, so in tropical America some households treat a resident boa constrictor as a valued pest controller.

Which children's poet and cartoonist wrote a comic 1962 song about being swallowed by a boa constrictor?

Shel Silverstein put the song on his album Inside Folk Songs, years before his poetry collection Where the Sidewalk Ends made him a bedtime favourite.

Which fact about reproduction separates boa constrictors from the pythons so often mistaken for them?

They bear live young, each one born wrapped in a clear membrane that it must push through before slithering off.

Released pets have founded breeding populations of boa constrictors in the south of which US state?

Florida gained its wild boas when owners freed pets that had outgrown their tanks, and the state now runs amnesty days that take exotic animals back with no questions asked.

A boa constrictor's constantly flicking tongue mainly serves which of its senses?

Smell is the tongue's job: every flick carries odour molecules to a special sensing organ in the top of the snake's mouth.

Pet keepers know the boa constrictor by a nickname describing which colour on its tail markings?

Red is the colour: the pattern deepens toward the tail, so the trade sells both the boa constrictor and its close cousin Boa imperator as red-tailed boas.

The dark bands along a boa constrictor's back are known by the word for which piece of riding gear?

Saddles is the term, and they help the snake vanish: the broken pattern works as very effective camouflage on a forest floor.

After the kill, a boa constrictor usually swallows its prey whole in which way?

Headfirst is the usual way, and the snake never chews: rhythmic waves of muscle pull the whole animal down the throat and into the stomach.

How does a boa constrictor keep breathing while its mouth is completely stuffed with a large meal?

A built-in air tube on the floor of the jaw stays open the whole time, working like a snorkel while the slow business of swallowing drags on.

A boa constrictor's small teeth have which shape to keep struggling prey from wriggling free?

Hooked teeth hold on like fishhooks while the coils go around, and a boa never runs short of them because its teeth are replaced continuously.

Attacks on people by boa constrictors are very rare mainly for which simple reason?

Humans are too big to count as prey, and that holds even for a baby, so a boa that strikes at a person is only acting in self-defence.

Small, lightweight juvenile boa constrictors spend far more of their time than heavy adults in which place?

Up in trees is where juveniles forage among the branches; as boas grow older and heavier they come down and spend most of their time on the ground.

Why might a normally night-active boa constrictor lie out in the sun during the day?

To warm itself up: a boa cannot make its own heat, so after a cold night it basks until its temperature climbs back up.

A boa constrictor's eyes turn milky blue and its temper shortens just before which regular event?

Shedding its skin clouds the eyes, because a fluid loosens the old layer from the new one, so a half-blind boa turns jumpy and defensive.

Genetic tests showed that a female boa constrictor had produced her babies through which rare event?

A virgin birth, known to biologists as parthenogenesis, lets an egg develop with no father, something boas almost never do.

Outside the breeding season, how do adult boa constrictors in the wild spend their days?

Entirely alone is the rule: boas seek each other out only to mate, when a female releases chemical signals that draw males to her.

Boa constrictors from Central America are known for which noisy defensive display when disturbed?

Hissing loudly means forcing out a huge lungful, and researchers studying how boas breathe found hisses among the biggest breaths the snakes ever took.

Boas in Central America have been recorded ambushing which animals at the entrances of caves?

Bats make a regular meal for boas, which lie in wait for them at cave mouths, on branches and even inside abandoned houses.

Breeders of pet boa constrictors use which word for selectively bred colour varieties such as albino?

Morphs such as albino are rare in the wild but common in captivity, where breeders pair snakes to bring out unusual colours and patterns.

Boa imperator, long treated as a kind of boa constrictor, was recognised as a separate species thanks to which evidence?

DNA sequencing showed the two differ by 5 to 7 percent, even though the snakes look so alike that the pet trade lumps them together.

Which naturalist first described the boa constrictor in the 1758 edition of Systema Naturae?

Carl Linnaeus filed the snake under Amphibia, the class in which he grouped reptiles together with frogs.

The Latin word boa, meaning a large serpent, appears in the Natural History of which Roman author?

Pliny the Elder used boa for a kind of large serpent, and medieval readers tied the word to the Greek for ox, though its true origin is unknown.

X-ray imaging revealed that a constricting boa keeps breathing by switching between sections of which bones?

Its ribs work in sections: when the front ones are pinned around a meal, a boa breathes with those farther back, since snakes have no diaphragm to do the job.

Large, heavy boas usually crawl forward by lifting and gripping with their belly scales, travelling in which way?

In a straight line is how a heavy boa creeps along, at only about one mile per hour, which is plenty for a hunter that waits for its meals to come close.

Boa breeders borrow the word for which garden pests to describe unfertilised eggs passed with a litter?

Slugs are the infertile eggs that arrive alongside the babies, in a litter that averages about 25 newborns.

Which natural barrier splits the boa constrictor's South American range into eastern and western arms?

The Andes split the range in two, and on the western side of the mountains boas reach down into Peru.

By preying on which animals do boa constrictors help limit the spread of leishmaniasis to people?

Opossums in the tropics can carry the disease, which biting sand flies pass on, so every one a boa eats trims the risk a little.

The only boa constrictor subspecies on CITES Appendix I, barred from commercial trade, is called after which country?

Argentina's boa lost much of its range to farming and to hunting for its hide and the pet market, so commercial international trade in it is prohibited.

The pale Hog Island boas prized by snake keepers come from the Cayos Cochinos off which country's coast?

Honduras is home to these island boas, whose naturally reduced dark pigment leaves them lighter than mainland snakes, with tails from salmon-pink to orange.

Which shock-rock singer made a boa constrictor draped around him a regular part of his 1970s stage show?

Alice Cooper shared the stage with a boa constrictor from the era of the album Killer, alongside props such as a mock gallows.

A boa constrictor's good eyesight reaches beyond what people can see into which kind of light?

Ultraviolet light is visible to a boa constrictor, a handy extra for a hunter that is mostly active from dusk through the night.

Which country star covered the comic song Boa Constrictor on his 1966 album Everybody Loves a Nut?

Johnny Cash released the tune as a single from his comedy album, and it climbed to number 39 on the Billboard country chart.

Boa constrictors are an invasive species on which Mexican island popular with cruise ships and scuba divers?

Cozumel's boas are an introduced population, one of several far-flung places where the species has taken hold outside its natural range.