Eyelash Viper Encounter in the Forests of Costa Rica!
In late February of 2024, my family and I went on a vacation to Costa Rica. As I mentioned in my previous article, the neotropics is a region of our planet bursting with life. Especially Costa Rica. A relatively large percentage of all multi-cellular life on Earth resides in Costa Rica. One of the many species we saw during our stay was the eyelash viper (Bothriechis schlegelli), a beautiful species of pit viper native to Central and South America. They come in bright yellow and sometimes other colors such as red, brown, green, and even pink (or a combination of these colors)! Just a gorgeous reptile. This article will be all about the eyelash viper, but stay tuned for more articles where I will dive into the other species we saw in Costa Rica!
So eyelash vipers are arboreal, meaning they are adapted for life in trees. They usually choose a spot where birds often visit and lie in wait for one to come by. They then strike rapidly, injecting the bird with hemotoxic venom. Eyelash vipers will never outright attack human beings- they will only strike at you to defend themselves, as they are pretty fragile creatures. It’s imperative to watch where you are stepping and what kind of brush you are going through when traversing through their native lands!
I took this photo with my iPhone 12 and my 8x48 Nikon binoculars. Cahuita National Park, February, 2024. I kept my distance!
The eyelash viper does not have actual eyelashes. Instead of hair follicles, their eyelashes are actually scaly protrusions. Some scientists believe the eyelash viper has evolved to have these “eyelashes” to aid in its camouflage by breaking up the outline of its head. In theory, this makes it more difficult for its prey and its predators to distinguish its head from the leaves and branches in its environment. For us humans, it looks very visible, especially the bright yellow ones, but we have to remember that animals don’t see the world the way we do. Eyelash vipers stay extremely still, and this lack of movement is what makes them seem invisible to their prey. They’ll often position themselves on top of ginger flowers in Costa Rica and eat hummingbirds that come flying to the flower for its nectar. The viper’s heat-sensing pits on its face give it infrared vision, allowing it to see the heat of the hummingbird’s body. Once it determines that it is close enough for a strike, it launches toward the prey in less than a second to deliver a fatal bite! The venom is so effective that the hummingbird is unconscious within seconds. Here is a video from BBC Studios that showcases this brilliantly.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
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I stumbled upon this eyelash viper while hiking through Cahuita National Park. I was informed by the wildlife guides there that it had been in the same spot for a few days and should be here for the next week or so, as it had recently captured and eaten a prey item. It takes a long time for these snakes to digest a meal! As a snake owner myself, I know this all too well, but I was surprised to hear from the guides that it would take multiple weeks for this particular eyelash viper to digest its meal completely. For a snake that size, I would have guessed it would take only a few days to digest a meal. But then again, I’ve only ever kept corn snakes, pythons, boas, and a few other species- never eyelash vipers! The last image on this Instagram post is a free image from Wikimedia Commons. I wanted to include a super close-up shot of this species in this post so people can see just how gorgeous this snake is. It looks like a beautiful little dragon to me!
Cahuita National Park. iPhone 14. Photo credits go to my brother for this one!
Thanks for reading this article. I ran into another venomous snake in the wild when I was hiking in the forests of southeastern Brazil with my Miami University team. I’ll be sharing photos as well as an article on that experience, so stay tuned! Until next time, and remember, KEEP IT WILD!
