Authorities are searching the Gold Coast after a South American boa constrictor was released by Queensland police officers who wrongly believed it was a harmless python.

Police were called to The Esplanade at Surfers Paradise on or about March 26 to respond to reports of a large snake spotted at the base of a tree on a footpath.

The officers released the reptile into bushland at the Southport Spit, but the incident has since sparked an operation by Biosecurity Queensland officers who said the snake was not a harmless python after all.

The reptile was identified as a two-metre South American boa constrictor, a large predatory snake that could pose a threat to other reptiles and even domestic pets.

Biosecurity Queensland officer Duncan Swan said a team of 12 State Government and Gold Coast City Council officers were scouring the Southport Spit for the reptile.

"In the wild these things tend to move no more than 100 metres a night – they are a nocturnal snake so we are reasonably confident that it is still in that general area," he said.

"But that said, trying to find a snake in a reasonably heavily vegetated area is very, very difficult."

Animal curator from the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, Saskia Lafebre, said the snake would not pose a risk to small children.

"If a boa constrictor that's gone missing is really two metres - it's certainly not a risk to children - perhaps small dogs, small cats, but that's a pretty similar case for our native species of python that we have around the coast as well," she said.

"They tend not to be an overly aggressive species but at the same time, you definitely do get individuals that can be very defensive and would certainly strike, so if you came across the snake, especially at two metres in length which it's reported to be, you'd certainly want to treat it with care.

"They can be up to three metres in length and sometimes even larger than that."

'They eat anything with fur and feathers'

Snake catcher Tony Harrison said boa constrictors were similar in appearance to harmless pythons but posed a range of threats to the wider environment.

"It has a couple of things it could potentially do - firstly it could introduce viruses to Australian species, and therefore wipe out the Australian population of reptiles," he said.

"It can also start to breed if it's pregnant and it drops a clutch of babies, and all of a sudden, bang - they establish here in Australia.

"They will be competing for other snakes that already naturally live here in Australia and potentially some exotic species eat reptiles as well, so that can be an issue.

Mr Harrison holds a carpet python that would be a similar size and colouring of the loose boa constrictor. ( ABC News: Tom Forbes )

"They eat anything with fur and feathers, and they can eat three times their girth, so it's a potential threat to any of our furry or feathered friends."

Mr Harrison said he was concerned about people finding the snake and keeping it.

"They [could] catch it themselves and get themselves an illegal pet - but that snake is potentially carrying lots of viruses, also competing with our natural snakes that are here for food," he said.

He said the snake was no more dangerous than a carpet python, but would bite if it felt threatened.

"They do have over 100 teeth, and they will defend themselves if they are confronted ... but they're not venomous, and they don't eat kids, like I've been hearing some really tall stories," he said.

However, Mr Harrison said he was confident the snake would be found.

"It's a needle in a haystack plus some - the best way to for us to actually land the snake and I don't think it'll be a problem and we will get it within a month - is basically, it's just the public's eyes," he said.

"They don't travel too far and especially being a captive-bred animal or an animal that's been kept in captivity, it's probably just very slowly cruising around, doing its thing and exploring what its new environment is.

"It won't be too long until a member of the public stumbles across it and calls one of the authorities and it gets caught quickly."

Snake poses no threat to children

However, Dr Bryan Fry, from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland, said people were "being fed ridiculous stories" about the snakes reportedly taking children.

"It been absolutely ludicrous some of the statements that have been put out about it, both by some of the biosecurity people as well as some of the [media]," he said.

"It's a joke. It's a two-metre long snake. There are carpet pythons on the Gold Coast, which are much larger than this snake anyway. We have native snakes which are bigger, so it poses no more of a threat than what we already have here.

"The danger level is from somewhere between nil and nought."

He also said there was no breeding risk to local snake populations.

"Boas have live young, pythons have eggs - it's physically impossible ... for them to even breed, let alone that their genetics are so distant that you wouldn't have any kind of viable young come out of them," he said.

"One pregnant female would not be able to establish a population unless a number of special circumstances happened, such as being in an area where it wouldn't be competing or where it would be able to out-compete native animals.

"In this particular case, based on the biological reality and our basic understandings of how ecology works, I would yet again say the odds of establishing are somewhere between nil and none."

Dr Fry said it was unlikely this particular snake posed a disease risk either to other animals.

"This is a very relevant risk if this was an animal that was specially imported - odds are it wasn't," he said.

Sorry, this video has expired Exotic snake slithers free on Gold Coast ( Tom Forbes )

"The disease risk is a potential one but in this case I think it's low as this is obviously an animal that's been in captivity for a very long time to reach that size."

He said the snake might have been smuggled in as a baby or even bred here illegally.

"It's not like someone's gone to smuggle a two-metre boa constrictor through Brisbane airport ... you are not going to get a snake that size in that way," he said.

"They are a gentle, magnificent creature that make actually a very good pet. If you look overseas, they are widely kept by tens of thousands of people."

ABC/AAP