Reptilia · Squamata
Chilabothrus chrysogasterCope, 1871
Turk's Island Boa
Photograph by gwar, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating snake from the Neotropic region, reaching 170 cm nose to tail.
Also called Great Inagua boa, South Bahamian Boa;, Turks & Caicos boa.
Reptilia › Squamata › Boidae › Chilabothrus
- Grows to
- 1700mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 14.2years
Longer than 57% of all boas anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 109 to 6,700 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
36 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Near Threatened
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2015
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- A2ce
The animal itself
- Limbs
- None
- Pupil
- Vertical slit
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 14.2years
Stark et al. 2020
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 1310mm4 ft 4 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 673mm2 ft 2 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1700mm5 ft 7 in
- Female length · mean, nose to tail
- 787.7mm2 ft 7 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 1424.1g3.1 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 1306g2.9 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 95.3g3.4 oz
1310 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016), Reynolds 2023 (9 females 520-860 mm SVL, mean 672.5, mass 42-142, mean 95.3 g; 5 males 525-770 mm SVL, mean 658.8, mass 63-150, mean 100 g; ; total length of 7 females 636-986 mm, mean 787.7 mm; 4 males 640-817 mean 744.75 mm)
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Dietcomputed
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Rocky, Shrubland
- Biome
- Mangroves
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Elevation · above sea level
- 10–402m
- Range size
- 204km²
no actual data but can be imputed as carnivorous like all snakes
Banfi et al. 2023
Reynolds 2023
"surficial (terrestrial, non-scansorial)" (Gearty et al. 2021)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 28.5
midpoint of the reported range — Myhrvold, Baldridge, Chan, Sivam, Freeman, and Ernest, 2015, Ecology, 96:3109-3109
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Serpentes
- Infraorder
- Alethinophidia
- Subspecies
- Chilabothrus chrysogaster chrysogaster (COPE 1871) Chilabothrus chrysogaster relicquus (BARBOUR & SHREVE 1935)
- Described by
- Cope
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1871
- Type locality
- Turk's Island", in error
Keeping one
5 ft 7 in × 2 ft 9 in × 4 ft 2 in(170 × 85 × 128 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes snakes as a fraction of total length: 1 × 0.5 × 0.75.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own total length of 5 ft 7 in (1700 mm), at 1 × 0.5 × 0.75 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Turk's Island Boa. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
A prey item should be between the same width as the widest part of the snake's body and about 1.5 times that width.
Widely used across snake husbandry references. An alternative formulation gives prey at 10-15% of the snake's body mass. This is established practice, not a measurement.
125kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 1,424 g, the heaviest recorded for Turk's Island Boa — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Sex decided by
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Boidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Chilabothrus chrysogaster. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chilabothrus-chrysogaster
@misc{chilabothrus_chrysogaster_2026,
title = {Chilabothrus chrysogaster},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chilabothrus-chrysogaster}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.