Sand boas

Sand Boas are related to the well-known boa constrictor of South America. They are also closely related to the python. All these non-venomous snakes kill their prey by squeezing them in their muscular coils.

There are three species of sand boas in India. All are stocky, thick-bodied snakes, especially suited for underground activities.

• Common sand boa (Eryx conicus) has a blotched pattern of spots and wavy bands and a very rough, keeled, dull body
• Red sand boa (Eryx johnii) : it is reddish brown , smooth and glossy.
• Whitaker's sand boa Eryx whitakeri) : Recently described by Romous Whitaker

However, the greatest dissimilarity is in the tail. The red sand boa (which is black in north-west India) has a tail so blunt that it looks as though it has been chopped off. In temperament too they do not resemble each other. The common sand boa is easily irritated and is quick to strike and bite, while the red sand boa has great patience and will never bite. This makes it an ideal snake for a child to be introduced to. Sand boas mostly eat rodents, which makes them another friend of the farmer. Sand boas have live young, usually 6 to 8, and newly hatched boas eat small mice, lizards, birds and insects.

Indian Red Sand Boa

Indian sand boas scales have small litters, typically 4-10 babies in each. Babies are born red with black stripes. As the snakes age, the stripes fade and the orange becomes brown. There are a few lines that retain the orange.

It's Red sand boa...part of Boa's family its a constrictor snake and non venomous. Pretty young one hence the colors....as they grow they loose the red to gain brownish..

Probably the only snake which can dig in the sand...that's why the front tip of the nose is so hard...acts like a shovel...

Red Sand Boa

A great creativity of nature Red Sand Boa.

Largest snake as long as a bus

Artist's impression showing the giant snake Titanoboa cerrejonensis

The discovery of fossilized remains belonging to the world's largest snake has been reported in Nature journal. By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

Titanoboa was 13m (42ft) long - about the length of a bus - and lived in the rain forest of north-east Colombia 58-60 million years ago.

The snake was so wide it would have reached up to a person's hips, say researchers, who have estimated that it weighed more than a tonne.

Green anacondas - the world's heaviest snakes - reach a mere 250kg (550lbs).

Reticulated pythons - the world's longest snakes - can reach up to 10m (32ft).

Snakes had the opportunity to evolve and grow as big as this one did in a way that they probably wouldn't today P David Polly, Indiana University

The team of researchers led by Jason Head, from the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Canada, used a known mathematical relationship between the size of vertebrae and the length of the body in living snakes to estimate the size of the ancient animal.

Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis by its discoverers, the beast's 13m-long body and 1,140kg (2,500lb) weight make it the largest snake on record.

"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips. The size is pretty amazing," said co-author P David Polly, from Indiana University in Bloomington, US.

Researchers discovered fossilized bones belonging to the super-sized slitherers and their possible prey at Cerrejon, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines. The animal is a relative of modern boa constrictors.

Warming world

"Probably like an anaconda, it spent a lot of time in the water," said Professor Polly.

"It would have needed to eat a lot.

"What its prey was exactly, we don't know. But it probably included alligators, big fish or crocodiles."

The researchers also used the reptile's size to make an estimate of Earth's temperature 58 to 60 million years ago in tropical South America.

Palaeontologists have long known that as temperatures go up and down over geological time, generally speaking, so does the upper size limit of cold-blooded creatures - or poikilotherms.

This is because the metabolism of a poikilotherm is more or less controlled by the average temperature of its environment.

Assuming the Earth today was not particularly unusual, the researchers calculated that a snake of Titanoboa's size would have required an average annual temperature of 30C to 34C (86F to 93F) to survive.

By comparison, the average yearly temperature of today's Cartagena, a Colombian coastal city, is about 28C.

Opportunity knocks

"A snake living in the tropics would have been operating at a much higher metabolic rate," said Professor Polly.

"So snakes had the opportunity to evolve and grow as big as this one did in a way that they probably wouldn't today."

Titanoboa (r)" vspace="0" width="226" border="0" height="170" hspace="0"> A vertebra from an anaconda (l) is dwarfed by one from Titanoboa (r)

He added that as the Earth warmed up in future, cold-blooded animals could be expected to evolve larger bodies.

Dr Head adds that the find "challenges our understanding of past climates and environments, as well as the biological limitations on the evolution of giant snakes."

However, Dr Matthew Huber, a climatologist from Purdue University in Indiana, who was not connected with the study, questioned whether the link between size and temperature was "generalizable and accurate".

He commented: "Head and colleagues' findings are the result of probably the first study in 'snake palaeothermometry', and as such must be viewed with caution."

Thai villagers work to keep snakes warm: BAN KHOK SANGA

BAN KHOK SANGA, Thailand, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Residents of a village in Thailand have had an unusual problem recently -- unusual for them, anyway -- keeping their cobras warm.
Ban Khok Sanga in the northeastern part of the country is famous for its cobra shows, Thai News Agency reports. The village is home to about 300 king cobras -- the world's largest venomous snake -- and 20 snake charmers.

Thailand has been hit with unusually cold weather with temperatures dropping low enough to kill unprotected snakes. The cold also makes the cobras lethargic.
"When the snakes are warm, they'll move fast and turn their bodies fast when fighting," said Bancha Laorad, a snake charmer. "If not, they'll be very slow and not elegant."
The villagers use scraps of cloth and hay to insulate the caskets in which they keep the snakes. They also make sure all the snakes get a daily dose of sunlight.
"The UVA from the sunlight helps spur the snakes' activity. It also stimulates the immunity of the serpents. If the snakes don't have the appropriate temperature and sunlight in the morning, they tend to die easily," said Sompoch Weerakul, an assistant professor at the Khon Kaen University Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.

Fossil of largest snake found in Colombia

BOGOTA, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Fossilized remains of a 42-foot-long, 2,500-pound snake discovered in northeastern Colombia represent the biggest snake ever found, scientists say.
The researchers, led by Jason Head of the University of Toronto, estimate the snake, called Titanoboa cerrejonensis, lived 58 million to 60 million years ago, the BBC reported Wednesday.
By comparison, the heaviest snakes living today, the green anacondas, weigh only about 550 pounds and reticulated pythons can reach about 32 feet long.
The researchers used the mathematical relationship between the size of vertebrae and the length of the body in living snakes to project the size of the prehistoric serpent.
"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips. The size is pretty amazing," said co-author P. David Polly of Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.
The snake fossil was found at Cerrejon, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines. It was related to today's boa constrictors.
"Probably like an anaconda, it spent a lot of time in the water," Polly said.
"It would have needed to eat a lot. What its prey was exactly, we don't know. But it probably included alligators, big fish or crocodiles."
The researchers' findings were reported in the Nature scientific journal.

Scorpion diet makes snakes more venomous

BANGOR, Wales, April 10 (UPI) -- Deadly saw-scaled vipers that feed on scorpions are far more dangerous than those that eat mammals and reptiles, a Welsh researcher says.

Axel Barlow of Bangor University began studying the snakes, one of the major killers in West Africa, to determine why anti-venom does not help some bite victims, the North Wales Chronicle reported. He found that the scorpion-eaters' venom is about 30 times as toxic as that of other saw-scaled vipers.

Barlow is collaborating on his research with the Venom Research Unit at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

"The West African governments continue to buy this anti-venom from India, but it doesn't work," Barlow said. "It's kind of intuitive that a snake's venom is going to be more toxic to the type of animals that they feed on."

Anti-venom is produced by injecting snake venom into horses, causing them to produce antibodies, and then harvesting their blood. To work, anti-venoms must be matched to the type of venom produced by the snake involved in the bite.