The big snakes grow to more than 18 feet and 200 pounds, but they are also big eaters, taking on prey as big as deer.
According to biologists at the University of Cincinnati, the size of the python's head and body isn't the only thing that makes it special. They have stretchy skin between their jaws that allows them to eat larger prey.
There is a study in the journal.
Most snakes have wide mouths so they can eat. The lower jawbones of snakes are not connected, unlike ours.
A UC College of Arts and Sciences professor found that the skin between the python's lower jaws is stretchy enough to allow it to eat larger animals than a typical snake.
In pythons, the stretchy skin between the left and right jaws is different. Almost 40% of their total gape area is stretchy skin. Their gape is huge even after you correct for their large heads.
The limits of animal anatomy are studied in his lab. He identified a method of snake movement that allows some snakes to climb wide cylinders or smooth tree trunks.
There are different potential limits to what animals can do in nature. What does it mean to be an anaphylactic? What limits does it have?
They are called pythons. They bite their prey, wrap their coils around it, and then eat it whole.
The bigger the snake's prey, the more energy it gets from it. It's important for pythons to not have to hunt as often because they can carry a lot of risk in a world full of busy roads.
The gape size of brown tree snakes was studied along with pythons. Many bird species have been wiped out by brown tree snakes.
The dimensions and weight of prey animals were also measured. The ability to use snake size to predict the maximal size of its prey and the relative benefits of consuming different types was given by this.
The study found that small snakes benefit from a small increase in gape size. The early advantage that python babies have in taking on a broader range of prey is due to this.
A bigger baby can eat a lot of different types of prey. Snakes can exploit a wider variety of prey if they are large.
Being large helps snakes avoid becoming hungry. Birds, snakes, and other animals fall prey to each other.
It's pretty much just alligator that can eat those pythons once they reach a reasonable size. The pythons eat alligator.
The invasion of brown tree snakes in Guam is similar to the invasion of Burmese pythons in the national park.
Ian Bartoszek is an environmental science project manager for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. They use radio transmitters in male snakes to find females before they lay more eggs. A big female python is capable of laying a lot of eggs.
Deer hooves and other big animals are often found in the stomachs of researchers. One python is regurgitating a deer.
He said that some things can't be seen on the project. One snake weighed 215 pounds and was removed last year.
A baby deer that weighed 6 pounds was eaten by a juvenile python.
25,000 pounds of python have been removed from a 100 square mile area. They are clearly preying on an assortment of native wildlife.
One species of python is changing the landscape of the Everglades.
Knowing the upper limits of the snakes' prey will help biologists understand how they're affecting the food chain.
It isn't going to help control them. It can help us understand the effects of invaders. You can place a rough upper limit on what resources the snake could be expected to exploit if you know how big the snakes get and how long it takes.
It doesn't mean that a snake will hunt big prey. Many snakes like to hunt smaller animals than they can eat.
There is good news and bad news. Females guarding their nest is the only defensive encounter Bartoszek has had with wild pythons.
He said that driving there is more dangerous than working with snakes.
More information: Bruce C Jayne et al, Scaling Relationships of Maximal Gape in Two Species of Large Invasive Snakes, Brown Treesnakes and Burmese Pythons, and Implications for Maximal Prey Size, Integrative Organismal Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1093/iob/obac033
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