I can’t pretend I love all animals. I’m not embarrassed to say that after reading up for this blog I woke up at 6am slightly terrified by a particularly unpleasant dream. It’s hard to sleep peacefully when your mind insists on showing you its own dream film production of you being slowly crushed by a boa constrictor.
I have always been terrified of snakes. I can’t happily walk through any long grass without clenching my toes and I sprint through the snake house at the zoo. And who can blame me? There are species with hook-like fangs spiked with venom that can kill an elephant with one bite on the trunk and species that coil themselves around and around their prey until the pressure causes the heart of their victim to stop. This, coupled with the fact people have found snakes as big as 10 metres long, and not forgetting the existence of the flying snake, means they really are my worst nightmare. I thank my lucky stars that their ancestors decided to do away with their limbs – I’m not sure how I’d cope if a 10 metre long constrictor suddenly charged at me on all fours.
However terrifying and creepy they may be I can’t deny they are very impressive. Recently whilst looking through a friend’s photographs of his time living in Ghana, I came across these…
They had stumbled across a very strange shaped snake. Unfortunately for this snake, it had literally bitten off more than it could chew and had died in the process. Wanting to know exactly what snack the snake had chosen, somebody decided to cut it open. Out popped a slightly digested crocodile. Just a quick *WARNING* the next photograph isn’t that pleasant…
I’m sure you’ve all seen similar images in the media. It may seem like something from a horror film but, despite the terrifying images, this is definitely something to be marvelled at (and maybe slightly admired).
Of all the deadly sins, gluttony is definitely my downfall. I regularly find myself lying in a heap waiting for my mountain of roast dinner and three portions of trifle to digest. As my mum would say, my eyes are definitely bigger than my belly. However, I can happily (and thankfully) say that I have never eaten so much that I have literally exploded. I’m afraid the same can’t be said for the Burmese python who attempted to swallow a 6 ft alligator in Florida back in 2005.The python was found with the alligator’s tail bursting from its stomach. I’m afraid this was also the case for the snake my friend stumbled across in Ghana. It seems that some snakes need to learn their limits.
Snakes usually eat smaller animals like rats or frogs but even these meals are impressive to witness. Snakes can’t chew their food like we can and so they simply swallow their food whole. But how do you stop your prey in its tracks without any arms to help you? Well who needs arms when you’ve got these tricks up your sleeve (or scales)…
Some species of snake like pythons and, of course, boa constrictors kill their prey by tightening their coils around them. The snake waits for the animal to exhale and then tightens its grip, restricting the victim’s ability to breathe which causes it to suffocate or its heart to fail. Creepily it’s been suggested that constrictors can actually sense when their victim’s heartbeat stops and then loosens its grip – why waste energy trying to suffocate an animal you’ve already killed?
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For some species it’s all about injecting their prey with a cocktail of toxins. Some species have modified salivary glands whilst others, like the deadly cobras, have separate venom glands altogether. This venom is a deadly mix of proteins, enzymes and other substances each with their own unique and gruesome way of killing any poor animal that happens to come into contact with them. For example, some contain hemotoxins that cause the blood of the victim to coagulate (or clot) or the Black Mambas venom contains neurotoxins that result in the victim becoming paralysed. It’s safe to say being bitten by a venomous snake doesn’t offer the nicest of exits.
Now comes the tricky bit. Even when you select a smaller meal, like a rat – how do you swallow something whole when it’s twice the size of your head? (Never mind when you decide to take on a metre long crocodile!) The big myth surrounding snake feeding is the idea that their jaws completely detach. This is not the case. The snake’s lower jaw is not completely fused together. Whilst our lower jaw is one single rigid bone, the snake’s lower jaw consists of two halves loosely connected by ligaments, which allows them to separate the two independently. The quadrate bone that connects the lower jaw to the upper jaw is hinged. This means they can open their mouths extremely wide. (You may be interested to know that we also have a quadrate bone but instead years and years ago, ours decided to move up to our middle ear to become the anvil bone. So yes, you might be upset that you can’t take on a Man Vs Food challenge in one gulp, but at least you can hear the applause of your adoring crowd when you manage to eat 3 Big Macs in record-breaking time!)
Their flexible jaw is the reason some snakes can swallow their dinner whole. They face their victim head on and slowly work it down into their throat. Their skin is very stretchy and the snake’s body muscles work to steadily force the meal down into the stomach where it’s slowly digested.
Eating a large meal obviously has its benefits – taking on a crocodile can mean it’ll be two months before you have to think about catching anything else! However, eating something over twice your size obviously takes quite a bit of energy, not to mention a lot of your time which leaves you open to attacks from predators yourself. It’s definitely difficult to multitask when you’re trying to get your mouth around a head of an animal that’s twice the size of your own. Some snakes even take on birds eggs as big as 4 times the size of their head! That is definitely a recipe for indigestion. A study in 2010 found it took one python 132 hours to digest a rat completely. Imagine how long it would take to digest an even bigger meal? It’s certainly a lot of strain on your body (and it probably puts my post-Sunday lunch feeling to shame.) Taking on such a feast requires some important changes in order to cope with the digestion and storage. The heart of a snake can swell by 40% and the liver doubles in size! This doesn’t last for long and after a few days everything returns to normal. The only difference is the snake has a nice full tummy and can laze about for some time before having to find another meal.
Pictures of snakes with strange, animal-shaped lumps moving down their body are definitely quite funny to see but when you stop and think about it, it really is quite an impressive party trick. Since reading all about them (and realising I’m probably not much bigger than an crocodile) I have been planning my escape in case I’m ever unfortunate enough to come across one. I’ve not found many plausible escape plans yet and I’ve decided the best option may be to avoid them altogether. I’m happy to stay as far away from those venom-loaded fangs as I possibly can. I will marvel at their impressive table manners from afar.
Guess what I know? 