Where Do Anacondas Live? Amazon and Orinoco Wetlands

The green anaconda’s range

The green anaconda has a huge range across the warm lowlands of northern and central South America. It lives in:

• Colombia and Venezuela, especially the llanos, the vast flooded grasslands of the Orinoco basin
• Trinidad, the northernmost part of its range
• Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana
• Brazil, across much of the Amazon basin
• Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, in the Amazonian lowlands east of the Andes
• Northern Paraguay, at the southern edge of its range

The Andes form a natural barrier, so green anacondas do not occur in the Pacific lowlands west of the mountains. They are lowland snakes that avoid high, cool mountain areas and stick to warm river basins and plains.

What kind of habitat do anacondas need?

Green anacondas are semi-aquatic. They need water that is shallow, slow-moving or still, warm, and full of plants for cover. Typical habitats include:

• Swamps and marshes with dense floating vegetation
• Oxbow lakes and lagoons, the cut-off loops of winding rivers
• Slow streams and backwaters of big rivers
• Seasonally flooded forest, known in Brazil as várzea and igapó
• Flooded savanna, such as the Venezuelan and Colombian llanos

Their eyes and nostrils sit high on the head, so they can lie almost completely hidden in murky water while watching for prey. They are slow and clumsy on land, but they bask on banks, rest among roots and sometimes climb into low trees. In the water they move quickly and smoothly. Learn more about how snakes swim in can snakes swim?.

Life in the llanos: wet season and dry season

Much of what scientists know about anacondas comes from the llanos of Venezuela, where the landscape changes dramatically through the year. In the wet season, roughly May to November, rivers overflow and the grassland becomes a vast shallow sheet of water. Anacondas spread out across the flooded land and hunt widely.

In the dry season the floodwaters retreat. Anacondas gather in the remaining rivers, ponds and muddy pools, often alongside caimans, capybaras and wading birds. This is when they mate, forming breeding balls of several males around one female. When pools dry out completely, some anacondas bury themselves in the mud and stay inactive until the rains return.

The same seasonal wetlands are home to the anaconda’s most important prey, the capybara. Read about the rodent’s habitat in where do capybaras live?.

Where do the other anaconda species live?

The genus Eunectes includes smaller relatives with their own ranges:

In 2024, researchers proposed splitting the green anaconda into two species, naming the northern populations of Venezuela, Trinidad and the Guianas Eunectes akayima, the northern green anaconda. The proposal is disputed, and many experts still treat all green anacondas as a single species. The status of the dark-spotted and Beni anacondas is debated too, and some researchers merge them with the yellow anaconda.

Anacondas outside South America

There are no native anacondas in Africa, Asia or North America. The giant snakes of Africa and Asia are pythons, which belong to a different family and lay eggs.

Florida is the one place outside South America where wild anacondas have been found repeatedly. Since about 2010, a small number of green anacondas, almost certainly escaped or released pets, have been recorded from the Gainesville area to the Everglades. No breeding population has been confirmed, but because South Florida’s wetlands are warm and similar to the anaconda’s home, the state added the species to its prohibited list in 2021. Florida’s best-known invasive snake is the Burmese python; see snakes in Florida for the full picture.

Why anacondas stay close to water

Water is central to everything an anaconda does. A heavy snake moves much more easily when water supports its weight. Water also hides it from prey and predators, helps it stay cool in tropical heat, and is where it hunts, mates and gives birth. Many of its prey animals, including fish, turtles, caimans and wading birds, live in or beside water, and land mammals must come to the water’s edge to drink.

That close link means anacondas suffer when wetlands are drained for farming or cattle ranching, or when rivers are dammed and flooding patterns change. Even so, the green anaconda’s range is so large and remote that the IUCN lists it as Least Concern.