The Boa Constrictor


 
   The Boa Constrictor eats any small mammal and they can swallow their prey whole. They are tan with brown blotches on its body. They live on the ground and since they are good climbers they spend a lot of time in the lower canopy.  They live in the Brazilian rainforest.  Their predators are crocodiles, jungle cats, and humans take them out of the wild and sell them to pet stores.
     They cannot hear, but they can feel vibrations through bones in their lower jaw.  Snakes use their tongue to smell. Their pupils are vertical so they cannot see anything in front of them.  They kill their prey by constricting it.
 Boa Constrictors keep growing all of their lives.  They may triple their length 3 times in the first year. The rate of growth slows as the snake ages. An old snake will grow a little bit, but will still grow.
      It is difficult to know how long snakes live in the wild.  No one has ever observed a wild snake all of its life.  Some snakes have lived in zoos for more than twenty years.  Scientists assume that larger snakes, such as the ball python, may live longer in captivity than in the wild.
    Derrick
  

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