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anaconda

  (ăn'ə-kŏn') pronunciation
n.

Either of two nonvenomous, semiaquatic snakes (Eunectes murinus or E. noteus) of tropical South America that kill their prey by suffocating it in their coils. E. murinus, the giant anaconda, can attain lengths from 5 to 9 meters (16.4 to 29.5 feet).

[Perhaps alteration of Sinhalese henakandayā, whip snake.]


 
 
Word Origins: anaconda

from Sinhala
This word originated in Sri Lanka

Boa o boa! You wouldn't want to exchange hugs with an anaconda. Your lifespan would be constricted--not to mention your ribcage. That's how an anaconda prepares you for dinner; it sinks its teeth into you, then wraps itself around your chest so tightly you can't inhale to shout "Down, boa."

It's the terror of the Amazon, or at least of the Amazon as depicted in the 1997 movie Anaconda, where special-effects imitation anacondas writhe and gobble up the bad guys and some of the good. South America is its only native habitat. But it has a name from the other side of the world, from the Sinhala language of Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon. How come?

The Oxford English Dictionary provides us with a reasonable explanation, namely, that it was a mistake. At first, the name from Ceylon was properly applied to a snake from Ceylon. In 1693, in a list of snakes from India in the Leyden (Holland) Museum, the Englishman John Ray wrote of "anacandaia of the Ceylonese, i.e. he that crushes the limbs of the buffaloes and yoke beasts." And for more than a hundred years afterwards, in English eyes, the anaconda was indeed a resident of Ceylon. But nineteenth-century experts unaccountably began using the same name for the snake residing in the Amazon basin. An 1849 British Museum Catalogue of Snakes lists "The Ancondo, Eunectes murimus ... Brazil ... Tropical America."

There are indeed constrictor snakes in Sri Lanka. Schoolchildren in a remote part of the country even found a double-headed one in 1997. Since the nineteenth century, however, the constrictors of Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia have been called pythons, a name the ancient Greeks used for a mythical monster.

Sinhala is the national language of Sri Lanka, spoken by more than thirteen million people there. Like English, it is a member of the far-flung Indo-European language family; Sinhala belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch along with Hindi, Urdu, and Romani. One other word from Sinhala that is known in English is ambarella, not a special kind of umbrella but a tropical tree with an egg-shaped yellow fruit also called the Otaheita apple.



 

Giant anaconda (Eunectes murinus).
(click to enlarge)
Giant anaconda (Eunectes murinus). (credit: © Z. Leszczynski/Animals Animals)
Either of two South American snake species in the genus Eunectes (family Boidae) that constrict their prey. The heavily built giant anaconda, or great water boa, is usually not more than 16 ft (5 m) long but can be longer than 24 ft (7.5 m), rivaling the largest pythons in length. The yellow anaconda is much smaller. Typically dark green with alternating oval black spots, the giant anaconda lives along tropical rivers east of the Andes and in Trinidad. It kills at night by lying in wait in water; it constricts prey as large as young pigs or caimans and occasionally forages in trees for birds. It may bear 75 live young at a time.

For more information on anaconda, visit Britannica.com.

 
WordNet: anaconda
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: large arboreal boa of tropical South America
  Synonym: Eunectes murinus


 
Wikipedia: anaconda


Anaconda
Yellow Anaconda, Eunectes notaeus
Yellow Anaconda, Eunectes notaeus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Suborder: Serpentes
Family: Boidae
Subfamily: Boinae
Genus: Eunectes
Wagler, 1830
Species

E. beniensis
E. deschauenseei
E. murinus
E. notaeus

Anacondas are four species of aquatic boa inhabiting the swamps and rivers of the dense forests of tropical South America. The Yellow Anaconda can be found as far south as Argentina.

There are two possible origins for the word 'anaconda.' It is perhaps an alteration of the Sinhalese word henakandaya, meaning 'whip snake', or alternatively, the Tamil word anaikondran, which means 'elephant killer'.[1] It is unclear how the name originated so far from the snake's native habitat; it is likely due to its vague similarity to the large Asian pythons. Local names for the anaconda in South America include the Spanish term matatoro, meaning 'bull killer', and the Native American terms sucuri and yakumama. Anacondas as members of the boa family are sometimes called water boas. The Latin name for Anaconda is Eunectes (from the Greek "ευνήκτης", meaning "good swimmer").

Species

Size

There is some debate about the maximum size of anacondas, and there have been unverified claims of enormous snakes alleged to be as long as 30–45 m (98.4–147.6 ft). According to Lee Krystek[2], a 1944 petroleum expedition in Colombia claimed to have measured a 11.43 m (37.5ft) specimen, but this claim is not regarded as reliable; perhaps a more credible report came from scientist Vincent Roth, who claimed to have shot and killed a 10.3 m (34 ft) anaconda in Guyana.

There are some reports from early European explorers of the South American jungles seeing giant anacondas up to 18.2m (60ft) long, and some of the native peoples have reported seeing anacondas up to 15.2 m (50 ft) long,[3] but these reports remain unverified.

Another claim of an extraordinary size anaconda was made by adventurer Percy Fawcett. During his 1906 expedition, Fawcett wrote that he had shot an anaconda that measured some 18.9 m (62 ft) from nose to tail.[4] Once published, Fawcett’s account was widely ridiculed. Decades later, Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans came to Fawcett's defence, arguing that Fawcett's writing was generally honest and reliable.[5]

Historian Mike Dash writes[6] of claims of still larger anacondas, alleged to be as long as 30–45 m (100–150 ft) — some of the sightings supported with photos (although those photos lack scale). Dash notes that if a 50–60 ft anaconda strains credulity, then a 150 ft long specimen is generally regarded as an outright impossibility.

It should be noted that the Wildlife Conservation Society has, since the early 20th century, offered a large cash reward (currently worth US$50,000) for live delivery of any snake of 30 feet or more in length. The prize has never been claimed. Also, in a study of 1,000 wild anacondas in Brazil, the largest captured was 17 feet long.[7]

In captivity

There have been very few instances of anacondas being bred in captivity. In October 2007, the New England Aquarium in Boston achieved a breakthrough when it was discovered that one of the aquarium's female anacondas was gravid with a brood of eggs.[8]

References

  1. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper (2001). Retrieved on 2007-09-01. “1768, probably a Latinization of Sinhalese henacandaya "whip snake," lit. "lightning-stem." A name first used in Eng. to name a Ceylonese python, it erroneously was applied to a large S.Amer. boa, called in Brazil sucuriuba. The word is of uncertain origin, and no snake name like it now is found in Sinhalese or Tamil. Another suggestion is that it represents Tamil anaikkonda "having killed an elephant."”
  2. ^ The Unmuseum: Big Snakes
  3. ^ Extreme Science: Which is the Biggest Snake?
  4. ^ Cryptozoology: Sucuriju Gigante, by Aaron Justice
  5. ^ Section Bernard Heuvelmans
  6. ^ Dash, Mike Borderlands: The Ultimate Exploration of the Unknown; Overlook Press, 2000 ISBN 0-87951-724-7
  7. ^ .The Search for the $50,000 Snake
  8. ^ "Mass. aquarium houses pregnant anaconda", Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Inc., 2007-10-18. Retrieved on 2007-10-18. (English) 

Bibliography

  • Bernard Heuvelmans (1958). On the Track of Unknown Animals. Hill and Wang. ISBN 0710304986. 

External links


 
 

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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Word Origins. The World in So Many Words, by Allan A. Metcalf. Copyright © 1999 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Anaconda" Read more

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