Bothrops bilineatus

Bothrops bilineatus, the two-striped forest-pitviper, is a slender, pale green, arboreal pit viper with a prehensile tail. Its ground colour is pale green with black speckles or with paired tan or reddish-brown spots. A creamy yellow line runs along the edges of the ventral scales, the belly is yellow with a green tinge, and the rear of the tail is pink, edged with yellow. The head is green with small black spots, or with spots outlined in black, and the iris is pale green. Adults usually stay under 70cm, though some reach 100cm, and the largest reported is 123cm. Its names include green jararaca and parrotsnake (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is nocturnal and spends the day hidden in thick foliage, tree hollows or at the base of palm fronds, always where it can anchor itself with its prehensile tail. It relies on ambush rather than active hunting. Its diet is mainly small mammals, birds, lizards and frogs, and juveniles stay closer to the ground to feed on small frogs and lizards (Wikipedia, general species account). It is an important cause of snakebite across the Amazon region. Because it lives in trees, most bites are to the upper body, including the hands, arms and face. Bites cause bruising, profound coagulopathy and spontaneous bleeding, and at least one death has been reported (Wikipedia, general species account). It bears live young (Wikipedia).

Bolivia lies within its Amazonian range, and Quinteros Muñoz (2024) describes the species as widely distributed through the Amazonian forests of Bolivia. The Bolivian records belong to the western Amazonia clade, subspecies smaragdinus, which covers the south-west Amazonia ecoregion of Beni, Cochabamba, La Paz, Pando and Santa Cruz, and the seasonally flooded savanna of Beni (Bolivian altitudinal-record note on B. bilineatus, via Plazi). A later report confirmed the species in the Yungas ecoregion of Cochabamba, extending its known range about 50km south-east from Villa Tunari, its nearest previous record (Bolivian altitudinal-record note on B. bilineatus, via Plazi).