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I found my newly imported albino boa dead after coming home from work today. At first i suspected a liver failure because of the location of a swelling I found. But I looked ok when i opened him up. Instead I found a large liquidfilled bladder around his heart, is this the lung?

Pictures can be seen at my website:
http://www.boa-madness.com/1.htm

Sorry to hear of the loss.

That bladder is not the lung. The lung is much bigger than that and attached to the trachea, the ringed tube at the top of the opening in picture 5. The trachea continues on the backside of the heart and opens into the lung just below the heart. The snake may have a fluid-filled pericardium, which is the sac of tissue enclosing the heart. I've not seen anything like that picture.

I think the third picture has part of the intestine opened up. That's a pretty big mass compared to the material in the intestine forward and back of it.

I don't much like the looks of the kidney in the final picture, too. It should be a darker reddish brown and not have those yellow lines.

Disclaimer: I am not a veterinarian. I've only opened up some snakes and looked inside them.

Paul Hollander

thanks for your opinion