Snakes – cold-blooded predatory reptiles – have become an example of food greed and gluttony, as many swallow very large prey whole and then digest it for a long time and motionless. For example, the Burmese python (Python bivittatus) feeds on large animals that weigh twice as much as monkeys, deer, and crocodiles. Nevertheless, if we take into account the ratio of the weight of the snake and its victim, then a completely different reptile should be recognized as the record holder – relatively small and even inconspicuous.
We are talking about Dasypeltis gansi, an African egg snake from the snake family. He really lives in the west of Africa and, like other representatives of this genus, specializes in eating bird eggs. This egg snake has an ordinary beige color, but reaches a meter in length and lives mainly on the ground, occasionally climbing trees.
D. gansi is devoted to a recent article. Journal of ZoologyThis is how zoologists describe how wide a snake can open its mouth and the maximum possible size of its “victim” (i.e. eggs). The authors compared the egg snake with the climbing gray pison, also known as the rat snake (Pantherophis obsoletus); this reptile also likes to eat eggs, but not against various animals. It is interesting that the examined egg snake swallows the egg whole without destroying the shell, and only then breaks it with the help of its spine, and then vomits. But the rat snake, on the contrary, digests the swallowed egg whole.
The article describes the features of the bone structure of the new plaque owner and how the position and shape of the skull changes when an egg is swallowed. It turns out that an egg snake can open its mouth three to four times wider than a rat snake (by the way, it is noticeably larger and more stocky).
The authors attributed D. gansi’s superpowers to specially developed soft tissues that are highly elastic and connect the snake’s hard jaws. Due to these, the skull of the animal can be deformed much more – in the diagram it somewhat resembles the opening of an umbrella. In this way, the snake can in principle swallow an egg four times its size.
This unusual adaptation arose because the egg snake had to adapt to global food. Such a need did not arise in snakes that ate longer animals. Source
Source: Port Altele
