Caicos Dwarf Boa (Tropidophis greenway) eating an Anolis scriptus. Photo by Matthew Niemiller.
Neotropical snake and Caribbean expert Bob Henderson writes: “In going over some prey data for a chapter on diet and foraging in species of Corallus and the dramatic dichotomy between West Indian and mainland Corallus, I came up with some numbers you might find interesting.
I recovered 970 vertebrate prey items from West Indian snakes. Of those, 559 (57.6%) were anoles. The next closest prey genus was Eleutherodactylus (129; 13.3%).
Among ground dwelling or largely ground-dwelling species (tropes, colubrids, dipsadids), anoles accounted for 54.1% of their prey. Among arboreal snakes (Corallus, Hispaniolan Epicrates, and Uromacer), anoles accounted for 64.1%.
I suspect there are very few West Indian macrostomatan snakes that do not include anoles in their diets at some time during their lives.”
Henderson once wrote that the reason we seem to get along so well is that I study lizards and he studies the snakes that eat them…