276 JOURNAL OP THE TRINIDAD 



NOTES ON SOME PECULIAR FEEDING HABITS OF 

 THE TRINIDAD OPHIDIA. 



By R. R. Mole. 



GENERALLY speaking the Ophidia or snakes can be broadly 

 divided into three great classes by the methods in which 

 they take their food. These are the constrictors or pythonoid 

 snakes which kill the animals on which they subsist by constric- 

 tion, and which do not absolutely hunt, but wait in a locality 

 where their prey abounds until a favourable opportunity oilers. 

 These snakes never follow their victims very far. Then there 

 are the vipers who also wait, but strike their victims down with 

 one fell lightning thrust of their terrific death dealing fangs. The 

 third class is the Colubrime which, be they poisonous or not, are for 

 the greater part active snakes, searching for their prey and 

 regularly pursue it either under the ground, on the surface, in the 

 trees or in the water, or all four. Now these three classes 

 invariably devote themselves to some particular order of animal 

 as their particular quarry, although all animals almost 

 would answer the purpose equally well. As a general rule a 

 constrictor will not eat frogs and the smaller colubers will not 

 devour mice. Many snakes will swallow frogs but object to 

 toads, but will take lizards — the reason being presumably that 

 the acrid juices contained in the skin of the toad are too strong a 

 relish. Some snakes will not eat anything but birds while others 

 content themselves with small rodents. Some eat fish. Others 

 eat anything living which comes in their way and which they 

 can swallow. Of course after having kept snakes for some years 

 one now and again begins to imagine he has learned everything 

 to he learned about them. The true constrictors are considered 

 to be the only snakes which constrict ; the vipers confine them- 

 selves largely to birds and mice or rats eve, tfcc. But we are 

 constantly being deceived. Now I was, I imagined, irrevocably 

 fixed in my belief that the Boa constrictors, except when very 

 young, never ate anything but birds and mammals. In this 

 belief I placed a large lizard {Twpinambus nigropunctatus) 

 three feet long, in a cage with an eleven foot boa. That night 

 there was a great row in the box but I did not think it anything 

 unusual, except that the lizard was trying to get out. Next 

 morning to my astonishment the lizard was gone. I could not 

 believe my eyes. There was no means of exit. A few days 

 later the deposits of the boa were plentifully studded with the 

 teeth and talons and the scales too — of the vanished saurian. 

 Yet the boa has never attempted to eat a smaller snake and 

 refused an iguana. Many boas seem to prefer birds to mammals 

 and very often freshly caught snakes will eat a pigeon when 



