South American bushmaster
Lachesis muta
— Where the name comes from
Lachesis is one of the three Fates, the one who measures the length of the thread of life before her sister cuts it: a name chosen without hedging for the largest venomous snake in the western hemisphere. Muta, “silent”, alludes to the fact that it shakes its tail in dry leaves like a rattlesnake but without a rattle: it makes the gesture and not the noise.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Primary lowland rainforest, far from people
- Range
- Amazonia, the Guianas, Trinidad, Atlantic Brazil
- Size
- 200–250 cm, up to 350 cm; 3–5 kg
- Diet
- Forest rodents, opossums, birds
- Lifespan
- 20 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It is the longest venomous snake in the Americas.
- 02
It is the only New World viper that lays eggs instead of bearing live young.
- 03
The female coils around the clutch until it hatches.
— What sets it apart
It lives where there are no roads, and that makes it at once not very dangerous and very dangerous: bites are extremely rare, but when they happen they happen days’ walk from the nearest hospital, and the quantity of venom delivered is enormous. Among rubber tappers and Amazonian hunters its reputation is the worst of all, and in many indigenous languages it has a name people avoid saying at night. It is also the first species to go when primary forest is cut: it never appears in plantations.
