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| Boidae | ||||||||||||||
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Boas have two subfamilies: Boinae or true boas and Erycinae or sand boas. Pythons are sometimes classified as a subfamily of Boidae, but are frequently listed under their own family, Pythonidae.
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2 Erycinae 3 External link |
Boinae
True boas are medium-sized to large snakes. It used to be said that boas were New World Snakes and pythons were Old World Snakes, but, with boas found on Madagascar and the Solomon Islands, this is not quite true. Instead, it is possible that boas have survived in evolutionarily isolated areas. South America, until a few million years ago, had a distinct fauna that included marsupial mammals; with the land bridge to North America, boas have migrated north as placental mammals and colubrids (for example) have migrated south.
At least three erycine species lay eggs: the Calabar Burrowing "Python", Calabaria reinhardtii (once classified as a python for this reason); the Arabian Sand Boa, Eryx jayakari; and the West African Sand Boa, Eryx muelleri.