Posted on 06/27/2015 11:54:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
Ever wonder what might happen if a python ate a porcupine? Well, wonder no more. One of these giant snakes — which kill prey by suffocating it and then consuming it whole — recently dined on a porcupine and didn't live to brag about it.
On June 14, a cyclist riding along one of the mountain bike trails at the Lake Eland Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, spotted a very engorged snake. The cyclist snapped a few photos of the gluttonous python and posted them to social media, where they quickly attracted the attention of locals who wanted to see the python themselves. Lots of people came to the park in the following days just to view the swollen snake, according to Jennifer Fuller, general manager at the game reserve.
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(burp)
How did it even wrap its body around the porcupine without being damaged by the quills?
No doubt, he had a scratchy throat afterwards...if indeed a python has a throat.
The quills lay/slant backwards. Snake scales may help.
more or less
H’mm ping.
Nobody ever said snakes are smart. :-)
Snake probably laid there until the porcupine stumbled on it, and simply latched onto its head so the porcupine was not able to assume a defensive posture until it was too late. Quills point backwards, so if the porcupine is eaten head first, the quills will just lay flat along the victim’s body. Quills will, however, swell up considerably as they absorb moisture and this might be akin to swallowing a stale dry biscuit whole without butter; the snake could probably use a few beers to wash it down.
America swallowed the lefist agenda whole
will regret it later
They are smaller around here and rarely seen
Nobody ever said snakes are smart. :-)
This snake was pretty bright. He’ll never have to buy toothpicks
The porcupine would not obediently lay its quills flat for the benefit of a snake trying to squeeze it to death.
Constrictors kill by wrapping their bodies around a victim, not by grabbing the head.
Then again, many snakes do eat carrion as well.
Less than a week later, on Saturday, June 20, park rangers found the python dead near the bike trail. When they cut it open, they found a 30-pound (13.8 kilograms) porcupine.
Believe it or not, pythons and other snakes do sometimes eat porcupines. However, many snakes end up regretting their choice of snack. A study published in 2003 in the Phyllomedusa Journal of Herpetology found that a porcupine's quills can pierce all the way through a hungry snake's body.
Correct, but if the snake started at the head, the quills would be forced backwards, the flat direction.
This is my theory. Not substantiated by field date of snakes eating porcupines. Just suggested by watching snakes eat mice, frogs, worms.
That seems to refer to actually swallowing the animal. The photo I saw didn’t seem to show any quills in the snake’s side, which could be explained by carrion (already dead) porcupine.
As far as American porcupines go, I’ve accidentally run over roadkill porcupines and had quills embedded in my tires. Very glad that they didn’t go into the sidewall instead of the tread.
If something harassed/bothered the snake enough to make it want to flee, the snake would regurgitate the porcupine to make it easier to do so. Learned a painful and fateful lesson.
Some constrictors will swallow their live prey head first. I saw a film on Youtube a month ago of a King snake (a constrictor) killing and eating a rattlesnake. The King snake entered the rattlesnakes den and swallowed the rattlesnake head first without first constricting (killing) the rattler.
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