Size: Length; females- 2.5m, males- 2m. Weight; 5kg.

Habitat and Distribution: A wide variety of habitats including tropical, humid forest, dry limestone forests, swamp and mangrove on the island of Jamaica and neighbouring Goat Island.

Age: 30 years in captivity.

Groups and Breeding: These snakes spend most of their time in trees, caves, thick foliage and dark crevices coming out only to hunt at night.

Changes in temperature, day length and rainfall are thought to stimulate breeding in Jamaican Boas, and mating usually takes between February and April. Males compete for the chance to mate with a female by emitting a pheromone and the one with the most desirable smell wins! She will mate with several males during the breeding season.

These snakes are ovoviviparous, which means that the female produces eggs which develop inside her for up to 7 months before they hatch and are born fully formed. A female will produce anything from 5 to 44 young at a time. A baby Jamaican Boa measures about 50cm long and weighs just 15g.

Diet: Rats, bats, birds, lizards and frogs.

• The Jamaican Boa is known as the ‘yellow snake’ or ‘nanka’ in Jamaica.
• The Jamaican Boa is the island’s largest terrestrial predator, killing its prey through constriction.
• Many Jamaican people believe snakes to be both poisonous and evil (as they have read this in the bible). This means that when they find one they will often kill them many times over (chop their head off, run them over then burn them). In actual fact, snakes can be very beneficial in that one of their main prey is rats - one of the principal threats to agricultural crops.
• Males have two spurs at the base of their tails which are evolutionary remnants of legs as they evolved from lizards.
• Mating boas may stay intertwined for up to 24 hours at a time and may do this several times over a few days. The males actually have 2 penises or ‘hemipenes’ but only use one at a time. However, if they are disturbed whilst mating, one of the hemipenes may be ripped off- making the other very useful!