Boa c. ortonii
"Orton´s Boa" (Cope 1878)
It is thanks to Dr. Omar Pesantes, CER Huachipa, Peru that we can offer you this information about Boa c. ortonii.
Dr. Pesantes has done a series
of field
studies about this relatively unknown Boa constrictor subspecies.
He took some photos
of Orton´s boas in the wild (including an exact description
of the locality where they were found!) and allowed us to use it on our
website.
Distribution:
From far south of the province Tumbes, Peru, to the mountainous regions of La Libertad. The eastern boundary is Cajamarca.
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Adult male, with a total length
Typical for Ortons boa is the dark-brown
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The largest female that was caught so far was about 9 ft. in length. Natives (who name the Boa c. ortonii "macanche") presented the skin of a dead specimen that was almost 11 ft. in length.
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Male, with a total length of 80cm (almost 3 ft)
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Normally, Boa c. ortonii lives in dry woodlands, but due to the excessive clearing of the woodlands, it was forced to evade into mountainous regions like La Libertad and Cajamarca. Meanwhile this subspecies has become endangered of extinction. In some areas, Boa c. ortonii has to compete for prey with Epicrates cenchria ssp.
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male, with 55cm (almost 2 ft) in total length, from the San Benito district, Province of Cajamarca.
San Benito is at 1900m altitude above sea level. The area
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The Ortons boa has to bare very low temperatures of about 17°C - 8°C (63° - 47° F) in the winter. The boas are very inactive during this period. In the summertime they deal with a relatively low humidity of about 65 percent (that is less compared to the need of other boa subspecies).
Boa c. ortonii feed on rodents, poultry, lizards, frogs and iguanas, as well as squirrels.
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Female, 32cm (1 ft).
Like the animal on top of
the page, this specimen was
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We don´t want to withhold this e-mail that received from our friend Bernardo Roca-Rey (Joemac). He lives in Lima/Peru:
"Today I met with Omar Pesantes and he showed 3 snakes to me of Boa C.
Ortonii. The truth is that it is a Boa Constrictor but that never it had seen
before (a think). In addition he explain me a little the problem that
has this snake:
The Boa C. Ortonii lives in the dry forests of the North of Peru. I know the
region well and is very different from the other habitats of other Boas C.. The
humidity and the temperature is not so high (65% and 18ºC-24ºC) like in the
other habitats of the rest of the Constrictor Boas. This does that is a little
difficult to have them in Lima because of the high humidity and the
temperatures in summer. In winter, the Ortoniis is not much active since the
temperatures fall between 8ºC and 17ºC.
In addition, the Boa C. Ortonii lives in the middle of the habitats of the Boa
C. Longicauda (East) and the Boa C. Constrictor (West). The problem is that the
explotation of the habitat of the Boa C. Ortonii, causes that these tend to
migrate towards the East or the West. This causes that competition between the
other Boas C. which can exist or the existence of crossbreeds between Ortonii
and Longicauda or Ortonii and Constrictor. (...)"
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Boa c. ortonii (Orton´s Boa) |
