The Puerto Rican boa (Chilabothrus inornatus), most commonly known as Culebrón ("big snake"), is a large species of boa endemic to Puerto Rico. It is a terrestrial and arboreal snake with a pale brown to dark brown coloration. It grows to in length. It feeds on small mammals such as rodents and bats, birds and sometimes anole lizards. Like most boas, it is viviparous (bearing live young) and kills its prey using constriction.
Taxonomy
It is extremely similar to the Jamaican boa (Chilabothrus subflavus) which was seen as conspecific for some fifty years until they were split in 1901 by Leonhard Hess Stejneger.
The taxon Piesigaster boettgeri was described from Mindanao in the Philippines, by the Spaniard :es:Víctor López Seoane in 1881, but was identified as a synonym of this species by Stejneger. Seoane's brother was an officer in the Spanish Navy and thus the localities of the group of specimens Seoane had obtained were confused during their passage to Spain. It is often still known as Epicrates inornatus in many publications.
Etymology
The specific epithet inornatus is from the Latin negation of ornatus, meaning 'adorned', thus the boa is 'unadorned'.
Ecology
thumb|Puerto Rican boa
Habitat
It is found in wooded and rocky places in the foothills.
Since the karst region where the Puerto Rican boa lives usually has many caves, the boa has the opportunity to feed on bats -a phenomenon which was previously seen in other Epicrates species. Observations in the 1980s revealed that boas capture the bats in flight by hanging at the opening of the cave, waiting until bats fly out of it. They then grab a bat with their jaws before killing it via constriction.
Reproduction
Pregnant females give birth to about 23-26 live boas.
Predation
In Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican boas may be eaten by some growth stage of invasive boa constrictors.
Conservation
Historic records, some dating back to the 18th century, indicate that during the first few centuries of Spanish colonization in Puerto Rico the boa was relatively abundant, and oil produced from the snake's fat was utilized extensively as an export (see snake oil). Impacts to the boa resulting from the oil trade were undoubtedly heightened by a concurrent reduction of habitat. Deforestation of the island began during this period and continued until, by the early 20th century, very little natural forest remained. Predation by the mongoose, introduced into Puerto Rico in the 19th century, has been postulated as a further cause for the boa's present status, but there is no direct evidence to support this idea.
In 1904 Stejneger mentions that during his time the snake was rather rare, he himself, as well as a number of other collecting parties in the newly acquired territory, were unable to see one during their expeditions on the island, although a trail of one was seen. Other collecting parties were able to collect five specimens in 1900 and in those first few years the island became a possession of the United States, and bring these to the mainland, almost doubling the specimens known at the time. In the previous century only six other specimens had been secured, these were all in Europe -one in Milan (used by Jan), one in Paris (studied by Duméril and Bibron from Bayamón, there was also a second specimen from Haiti, but this one is now thought to have been misidentified), two or more somewhere in Spain (those of Seoane supposedly from Mindanao), and the three original syntypes used by Reinhardt in Copenhagen.