Ok I'll probably get shot for asking this but could somebody tell me ( or direct me to literature) what the taxonomic differences between pytons and boas are? I've noticed that pythons and boas from SA look very similar to counterparts in Africa and was wondering about coevolution and convergent evolution.
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Taxonomy
hgiddings
Aug 08, 2003 02:43 PM
Replies (2)
snakeguy88
Aug 08, 2003 05:13 PM
A large difference would be the manner in which young are produced. Pythons lay eggs, boas give birth. Boas are usually new world species, and pythons are usually old world species (with a few exceptions...sand boas, madagascan boas, ect.). Andy
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Andy Maddox
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone
meretseger
Aug 08, 2003 05:51 PM
There are a few egglaying sand boas (Eryx muelleri and jayakari, and Calabaria if you count it), but no livebearing pythons. If by SA you mean South America... there are no pythons in the Americas. (If it helps you at all, the andaconda is a boa). Convergence can be quite confusing though. At any rate, this topic is such a mess that there are several snakes that people can't decide if they're pythons, boas, or neither, and I've come to the conclusion that a layperson like myself has no hope of understanding it 
. I think most of the official distinctions revolve around internal anatomy. Examples are Loxocemus, called the Mexican 'python' (probably not a python), Tropidophis (sp?), the Round Island 'boa'(probably not a boa), and Calabaria/Charina reinhardti, the Calabar burrowing python/ground boa, which may only resemble its genus-mates through convergence and in my opinion may acutally be from another planet.
