New Boa Species Discovered In Remote Pocket Of Bahamas Already Well On Way To Extinction

[hatrack]

A team from Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology discovered the silver boa (Chilabothrus argentum) in a remote corner of the Bahamian Archipelago called the Conception Island Bank. Like all members of the Boidae family, to which it belongs, the Bahamian silver boa or Conception Bank silver boa is a nonvenomous, constricting snake.

In a paper published last month in the journal Breviora describing the new species, the team writes that the snake should not only be listed as critically endangered based on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List criteria but that it is “one of the most endangered boid snakes globally.”

“We found this species on its way to extinction, and now we have the opportunity to intervene on their behalf so that doesn’t happen,” Graham Reynolds, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Asheville who led the team that made the discovery in 2015 while he was a Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow, said in a statement.

Reynolds knew he had stumbled on something new the first time he laid eyes on the silver-colored, distinctly shaped boa in July 2015. During a subsequent trip to the islands in October 2015, Reynolds and team found 14 more individuals, which they sampled, measured, and tagged.

EDIT

https://news.mongabay.com/2016/06/new-boa-species-on-its-way-to-extinction-discovered-in-the-bahamas/

[get the red out]

1. It's beautiful too

What a lovely creature!