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Boiga
Boiga sp (Toxycodryas sp)
-4.39701, 15.3304
Field Notes
Description:
Also known as Blanding Tree Snakes, these snakes belong to family Colubridae. The specimen seen on photos was observed for aver a year, first two photos, with milky eyes, taken at the time the snake was molting (shedding) - these milky eyes occur when the snake is casting its skin off. It measured some 1,5m in length, with grey-light brown colored skin with darker brown pattern. The main physical feature of the appearance of this snake is its large head with over-sized mouth, and fangs pointing backwards - we called this snake "A Big-Smile snake", since, with its large mouth always appears like it was smiling...
Habitat:
I heard that there are only two species of Boiga (Toxycodryas) occurring on African continent. They are arboreal snakes, occurring in forest. They are reported as very aggressive, and able to deliver a severe bite although deaths from these species seem not to be reported.
These tree snakes pray on pretty much anything they can swallow including birds, rodents and lizards.
Notes:
In general, I'm not really in favor of Zoos, and rarely post photos of animals in captivity, but this place mentioned here deserved a bit different treatment. In one moment, my younger son was very interested in learning about African snakes; but my wife wasn't really too keen to trying to look for these beautiful animals in nature... which made lot of sense knowing that facilities to treat you are cruelly lacking in Africa; where we lived...
So, as a sort of compromise, I found a great place with great team in Kinshasa (where we lived at the time) to learn from them. And it was really a great experience; we , my son and I, learned a lot in a dozen of visits. So if you are around Kinshasa, the place is called "Le Jardin de Serpents" and their FB page is https://www.facebook.com/Les-Serpents-du..., for amateurs...
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