This caused him to awake with a start, and upon realising what had happened, he awoke the others.”
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Captured silver boas were electronically tagged by the scientists before being freed back into their forest home.
The creature is said to be critically endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” criteria, and threatened by feral cats that roam the island.
A paper describing the silver boa is published in the journal Breviora.
Like other constricting snakes, the boa wraps its body around prey and causes death by suffocation. The staple diet of boas in the Bahamas consists of frogs, birds and rats.
The silver boa was discovered on Conception Island Bank, which comprises uninhabited Conception Island and its satellite islets.