SNAKE, CHARMER: Biologist Bruno Rocha shows the rare boa, Corallus cropanii, to local children in Guapiruvu, the village closest to where the snake was found.LIVIA CORREA
Earlier this year, wildlife biologist Bruno Rocha received the call he’d been dreaming of his entire adult life. Two men from the small village of Guapiruvu, southwest of São Paulo, Brazil, had captured a snake that they said looked exactly like the one in the brochures Rocha had distributed in the area a couple of months earlier. Rocha, a researcher at the Butantan Institute, jumped into his car and drove the more than 200 kilometers that separate São Paulo from Guapiruvu. Upon arrival he confirmed, to his amazement, that the snake was indeed a Corallus cropanii, one of the world’s rarest boas. Standing before the exceedingly rare snake, Rocha became the first biologist to lay eyes on a living specimen since 1953, when the species ...
