Bothrops lanceolatus

Appearance

Its color is brown, black and gray.

Range and habitat

Bothrops lanceolatus is generally considered endemic to the island of Martinique in the Lesser Antilles. Along with Bothrops caribbaeus and B. Atrox, it is one of three Bothrops species found in the West Indies. Bothrops lanceolatus — known as the fer-de-lance, Martinican pit viper, and Martinique lancehead — is a pit viper endemic to the Caribbean island of Martinique.

Some reserve the common name fer-de-lance for this species, while others apply that name to other Bothrops species, as well.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

As ambush predators, Martinique lanceheads typically wait patiently somewhere for unsuspecting prey to wander by. All of the various species are carnivorous, and eat other animals.

Their diet primarily changes based on size and location. Larger individuals can feed on larger prey, while smaller species must eat smaller prey items. With few exceptions, crotalines are ovoviviparous, meaning that the embryos develop within eggs that remain inside the mother's body until the offspring are ready to hatch, at that time the hatchlings emerge as functionally free-living young.

In crisis

Bothrops lanceolatus is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Bothrops lanceolatus, Wikidata item Q391459. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.