"Anaconda" is often used to refer only to the green anaconda, Eunectes murinus.

Anacondas are large, non-venomous boas found in tropical South America. Although the name actually applies to a group of snakes, it is often used to refer only to one species in particular, the green anaconda, Eunectes murinus, which is one of the largest snakes in the world, and (together with the reticulated python of southeast Asia) arguably the longest. Specimens of up to around 30 feet have been caught or killed and examined.^{[citation needed]}

They live mostly in water, such as the Amazon River. While this snake pose a danger to humans^{[citation needed]}, and there are several ascertained cases of people being killed by it^{[citation needed]}, it does not regularly hunt humans. Its standard prey includes fish, river fowl, and occasionally domesticated goats or ponies that venture near or into the water.

Threat from dangerous Anacondas is a familiar plot in comics, movies and adventure stories set in the Amazon jungle.

Anaconda may refer to:

• Any member of the genus Eunectes, a group of large, aquatic snakes found in South America.
  • Eunectes murinus (the green anaconda), the largest species, found east of the Andes in Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and on the island of Trinidad.
  • Eunectes notaeus (the yellow anaconda), a smaller species found in eastern Bolivia, southern Brazil, Paraguay and northeastern Argentina.
  • Eunectes deschauenseei (the dark-spotted anaconda), a rare species found in northeastern Brazil, Coastal French Guiana and Guyana.
• The giant anaconda, a mythical snake of enormous proportions found in South America.
• Applied loosely, any large snake that “crushes” its prey by constricting.^[1]

[edit] Etymology

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary states^[2] the word is probably a modification of the Sinhalese word henakandayā,^[3][4][5] which is used to refer to a small slender green whip snake found in Sri Lanka. However, certain other literature^[6][7] state henakandayā refers to a now extinct constrictor once found there. Richard Boyle (the Sri Lankan English consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary) writes in his book 'Sinbad In Serendib'^[8]:

[edit] References

Look up anaconda in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

[edit] Further reading

This article includes a list of related items that share the same name (or similar names).