Puerto Rican Boa - Feeding Behavior

Feeding Behavior

The boa feeds by seizing the prey in its jaws, wrapping several coils around the victim, and then constricting until the prey has suffocated. The prey is then swallowed head first. The feeding habits of the very young are unknown.

Since the karst region in which the Puerto Rican boa lives usually has many caves, the boa has the opportunity to feed on bats. It was previously unknown how the boa managed to capture the bats in flight. Observations revealed that boas hang at the opening of the cave, waiting until bats fly out of it. Then they grab a bat with their jaws before killing it via constriction.

Read more about this topic:  Puerto Rican Boa

Famous quotes containing the words feeding and/or behavior:

    “The will to domination is a ravenous beast. There are never enough warm bodies to satiate its monstrous hunger. Once alive, this beast grows and grows, feeding on all the life around it, scouring the earth to find new sources of nourishment. This beast lives in each man who battens on female servitude.”
    —Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)

    “One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.”
    —G.C. (Georg Christoph)