....wow, Ian that is truly an incredible shot, nice to finally meet the lad who caught it...I was advised much the same by WW that Clelia were not common (& I agree w/ your assessment of tropical abundance)yet Vitt advised they were fairly common in Brazil. So did that Clelia manage to engulf the viper or did it give up eventually?
Have you any experiences/in-situ jpgs/etc... w/ Conophis, aka the "road guarders"???






Posted by: caparu at Thu Mar 9 06:30:07 2006

I am the photographer who took the first picture. Didn't realise it'd gotten round so much!

I spent almost 5 years in the Colombian Amazon - mainly doing my PhD research on the lizard community there.

'The' photo, actually hides alot of info. Technical details - EOS 1, 15mm lens (fisheye), 1/2 second, f8. Because of the fisheye lens, you have no idea how big those snakes were! The Clelia was a big snake, about 7 feet. And the B.atrox was the largest I had ever seen, a good 5ft . You can just see in the photo, that the Bothrops had eaten the night before (a spiny rat). The Clelia was 'stuck' at this bulge, when discovered at 5.30AM (sunrise). I photographed them for a good hour and a half. The close-ups were done after moving the snakes somewhat, for better light, but the fisheye shots were done in-situ.

I received a runners up award in Animal Behaviour, BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year - the most prestigious wildlife photography awards. So I am very proud of that shot.

Clelia was rare in the field. In fact, I only saw 4 in the whole five years. However, you should remember that very few snakes are common in the Amazon. People believe you'll be tripping over them, but this simply isn't the case.

If there are any specific ecology Q's you or anyone has about Amazonian snakes, make a post - I'll try and answer them if I can.

Cheers,
Ian

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