Wednesday 18 December 2013

Amazon Tree Boa (Corallus hortulanus) Short Descryption

Other common names:  Garden tree boa,Common tree boa, Cooki tree boa.



Description: Corallus hortulanus is a slim species from Boidae family. Like almost all Boids don't lay eggs becouse they are ovoviviparous. This species have various varaiety of colours and patterns from orange, red to brown and sometimes have stripes, speckles, saddled witch rombhoid or chevron shapes or even paternless. They are living in huge area of 5 000 000 km in Amazon basin. It's possible that this ATB can contain cryptic species but we don't have sufficient data to prove or deny this possibility.
Taxonomy: 
   
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Subphylum:Vertebrata
Class:Reptilia
Order:Squamata
Suborder:Serpentes
Family:Boidae
Subfamily:Boinae
Genus:Corallus
Species:C. hortulanus
    wikipedia.com

Subspecies: Currently we can recognize two subspecies C. hortulanus hortulanus who occurs in the Guianas, Amazonia, and south-eastern Brazil, and C. hortulanus cooki from southern Central America, northern Columbia, northern Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, and the southern Windward Islands.

Geographic range: Neotropical, typically found below 300m elevation.



Habitat: Generally ATB occurs in tropical rainforest often seen on trees along the river. This taxon occurs also in dryer forest and South American grassland.

Lenght: 1,5 - 2m, males are little shorter.

Adult weight: 600g - 1,5kg.

Lifespan: in captivity 12 - 20 Years.

Behaviour: They are aggresive species especially as juveniles which is defensive strategy for all boids and pythons. They gives some warrnings what includes gentle bites (still hurtfull becouse of their long thooth). In night time and after feeding they are in hunting moode and the best things to do is not handle them, they can try attack everything what they see. Hovewer they can used to humans handling and stop bitting but no all of them and this still requires some time and work. They also anchor themselves while handling and they are able to constrict on human body parts ( but they cant kill humans).