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snakes in popular culture they are often treated as voracious and alien creatures, and there is a grain of truth in that. The ability of snakes to loosen their jaws and swallow prey of seemingly impossible dimensions in their entirety is incredible, and that’s doubly true when we talk about a huge snake like an anaconda. But what seems horrific to us is a sign of evolutionary success.
Natural selection caused the snake to lose the four legs that its ancestors had, but snake species now represent a third of the total number reptile kind. On the surface, the snake takes several complex biological processes and reduces them to their most basic parts to accommodate its primitive body shape. But that’s also forced snakes to take on some really creative – and often hideous – traits to help them perform tasks that creatures enjoy. people and chimpanzees take for granted.
Some of these unique changes allow snakes to go a long time without eating a meal. But the why and the how are the most important part of the answer. This is how some snakes developed the ability to go without food for long periods of time and how the conditions led them to become that way.
How snakes consume their prey
A snake’s open and hissing mouth may be terrifying up close, but it also reminds us that we are lucky enough to chew. All snakes are ambush predators, but they have evolved three primary methods of consuming prey, each with varying effectiveness depending on a species’ size, nature, and environment.
Venom is perhaps the most effective. Snakes’ needle-like fangs may not be great for ripping and tearing at an animal’s body, but they’re basically built like hypodermic needles. Once the venom works — by killing or paralyzing the prey — the snake can go to work by ingesting it. In some cases – as with pit vipers like rattlesnakes – the venom can even begin the process of liquefying the insides of a prey animal to make them easier to digest. But only about one in five snake species is poisonous.
Constrictor species are more common as they use different methods of crushing their prey to incapacitate them before being swallowed. Others – like the garter snake – are simple, effective predators that can reach out to their prey and swallow it whole. For constrictors and venomous snakes, the real chore comes from actually ingesting their prey. These snakes are unable to tear or cut the flesh, but must open their jaws as wide as possible and move their lower jaws slowly under the prey as if setting up a forklift. The upper and lower jaws of a snake do not separate, but can open up to four times the width of a snake’s body. Their skin is similarly designed for flexibility and to mold around the food.
How snakes use their energy
If you’re wondering how these legless reptiles can go so long without food, you need to understand how and why different species of animals require dramatically different amounts of energy. While the organisms that cover this planet take on incredibly diverse forms, the process of natural selection that underlies everything is driven by the simple arithmetic of energy spent and energy expended. Like warm-blooded animals, humans and all others mammals can maintain their internal body temperature. While this allows mammals to be more active than their reptilian counterparts, this active metabolism is also costly in terms of energy. The cheetah is the world’s fastest land mammal, but to properly maintain that body, you need to eat more than six pounds of meat a day.
Reptiles can afford to be more energy efficient because they use an external power source. Natural heat and light make them active and moving, and snakes can operate optimally between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Their lower metabolic rate means they need to consume less food in the first place, and the average reptile only needs 20 to 25% of a mammal’s nutrient intake. It’s an effective way to succeed because it allows them to succeed even when the odds may not be sustainable for more deadly but also more energy-dependent mammalian predators. It also allows them to live effectively through cold weather without the expense of maintaining their body heat or developing specialized behaviors such as hibernation.
How snakes digest their prey
By incapacitating their prey with a single venomous bite and then swallowing them whole, these ambush predators can often both hunt and eat with very little energy expenditure – but digesting their meal is a very costly process. The burmese python is an extreme but representative example. Once a fresh meal has been introduced into the esophagus and the chemical breakdown process begins in the snake’s stomach, this snake’s body begins to mutate wildly. Their metabolism accelerates to 44 times the original rate and their organs can expand up to twice in size to maximize the efficiency of the digestion process. This isn’t the norm, but it’s impressive when you consider that most snake species eat a quarter of their body weight in one sitting. Pythons are particularly voracious eaters, with some pythons known to eat up to 95% of their body weight.
Humans may need three square meals a day, but a snake can just stuff itself once and then take a long nap while it digests. The actual digestion process may vary depending on the size of the snake, the ambient temperature, the size of the meal, or several other circumstances. Shorter meals can take three days, but it can take a huge snake, such as an anaconda, weeks to get a larger meal, such as a deer.
There are dangers associated with longer and more difficult digestive processes. Larger game is more likely to have horns, fangs, or claws that can pierce an internal organ and kill the snake. They need to be exposed to heat to digest properly, but they are also vulnerable targets as long as they are full of their meal. And while the digestive acids used are potent, a snake’s organs are in a race against their prey. If it can’t dissolve the prey faster than the corpse can decompose, the snake’s meal can poison it, grow in its stomach, or cause the explosion of gases. It can be a costly risk, but a large meal dramatically extends the amount of time a snake can go without eating.
The feeding schedule of the average snake
In terms of how often and how much food the average snake needs, it can vary wildly between different species. Researchers have identified both frequent and infrequent feeders, the latter exhibiting the behavior of ball pythons that have been shown to grow their organs to aid in digestion. Baby snakes and frequent feeders may eat about twice a week, while rare feeders can easily go without food for a few weeks at a time. In extreme cases, it can take weeks for the last meal to even be digested.
As reptiles, snakes are also capable of a state called fogging allowing them to sink into a deep stupor during the colder months. It can be a crucial method of survival when prey can be scarce and difficult to track – and with a lack of sunlight and heat, most snakes are ill-equipped to hunt. corn snakes They have been known to go without food for two to three months during hibernation, but many species will take frequent breaks during extended periods of rest to search for new food.
How long can snakes go without food?
A baby snake begins to starve severely without food after about a week — and once that baby reaches adulthood, members of most snake species can easily last two to three weeks. But the time it takes for a snake to starve can depend a lot on the species. Smaller snakes tend to eat more often than larger ones, but species like the ball python can last up to two years without a meal. Without an internal metabolism to manage, the energy costs of doing nothing are much lower than for an equivalent mammal.
That said, science is just beginning to discover the full survivability of snakes. A study looking at the tactics snakes use when they might starve took different species of snakes and observed their behavior when given nothing for six months. In addition to their naturally low energy requirements, three separate snake species showed the ability to further lower their metabolism by as much as 70%. It’s a fascinating but still uncertain look at how these creatures work and how they may be able to survive even longer periods without food than we think possible.
Next one: Do butterflies drink blood? And 13 more surprising butterfly facts
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