A Snake Can Eat a Longer Snake

In order to solve a longstanding mystery of how a king snake can eat another snake that's longer than itself, Kate Jackson of the University of Toronto and colleagues recorded and watched the whole thing unfold. The king walks its jaws over the prey in ratchet fashion, then compresses its own vertebral column like an accordion to make the incoming snake go down. Then when all is said and done, the the king pukes some back up. Can you blame him?

Snakes Eat Their Offspring

Many rattlesnake mothers will eat some of their non-surviving offspring, scientists learned in February, 2009. The postpartum cannibalism moms in the study ate about 11 percent of their eggs and dead offspring. Why? "A cannibal rattlesnake female can recover lost energy for reproduction without having to hunt for food, a dangerous activity that requires time and expends a great deal of energy," said Estrella Mocio and Kirk Setser, lead authors of the study and researchers at the University of Granada in Spain.

Every mom knows that pregnancy and birth really sap your energy. To get some back, many rattlesnake mothers will eat some of their non-surviving offspring, a new study finds.

This postpartum cannibalismhelps the mother regain strength for her next reproductive effort, researchers report.

A lack of information on cannibalism in rattlesnakes prompted a group of Spanish, American and Mexican researchers to begin a study in 2004 that monitored cannibalistic behavior in 190 female pitvipers (Crotalus polystictus) found in central Mexico, where the species is endemic. The snakes had a combined total of 239 clutches of eggs over the study period.

The researchers found that on average, the mother snakes ate about 11 percent of their postpartum mass particularly eggs and dead offspring to regain energy.

"A cannibal rattlesnake female can recover lost energy for reproduction without having to hunt for food, a dangerous activity that requires time and expends a great deal of energy," said Estrella Mocio and Kirk Setser, lead authors of the study and researchers at the University of Granada in Spain.

A wide variety of animals have been found to eat their offspring, including polar bears, burying beetles, hamsters, wolf spiders and a range of fish species. Scientists have looked for reasons why species might devour their genetic progeny.

The new study, detailed in the January 2009 issue of the journal Animal Behaviour, shows that cannibalism in this species is an evolutionary result of the snake's feeding behavior, since its prey is dead for some time before being eaten by the snake.

"Viperids in general are prepared to eat carrion, and for this reason it is not so strange that they consume the nonviable sections of their clutches after going through the great energy expenditure caused by reproduction," Mocio said.

Mocio and his colleagues found that four factors influenced whether the mothers practiced cannibalism and how much they ate:

the day of the birth (females that give birth at the end of July are more likely to be cannibals, since they have less time to feed and prepare themselves to reproduce again); the proportion of dead babies per clutch; the level of maternal investment (the larger the brood, the greater the chance that it will contain nonviable elements, which she will eat); and stress caused by being in captivity (the researchers maintained the females in captivity for an average of 21 days).

Of all the females, 68 percent consumed part or all of their dead offspring, and 83 percent of these ate them all, and waited little time to do so (around 16 hours), although some ate them "immediately after giving birth," Mocio said. The rest (40 percent) of the females didn't eat any of their dead offspring.

The researchers said this cannibalism is not the same as parricide or infanticide since they're not eating live offspring, even though they look very similar to dead ones for the first two hours after emerging from their membranes. During the study, only one female ate live babies.

Snake Can 'Fly' 50 Feet

Look out below! If paradise tree snakes want to get from one tree to another without climbing down, they fly. Well, glide, really. To get airborne, they either drop from a branch or actively leap off the branch to get a little more height in order to glide farther. Then they flatten their bodies out and make slithering S-waves for in-flight stability. "They flatten their ribs and make themselves Frisbee-like in form," explains Jake Socha of the University of Chicago.

You might not think snakes need any more tools in their box of fright tactics. However, some of these slithering reptiles are dramatic flyers.

Jake Socha of the University of Chicago has been studying snakes' ability to act like birds for eight years. Today he revealed just how good they are at winging it.

"Despite their lack of wing-like appendages, flying snakes are skilled aerial locomotors," he said.

Like a Frisbee

Snakes join birds, insects, bats, squirrels and even ants in the realm of aerial prowess. So just how do they do it?

"First of all, they flatten their bodies out all the way from their head to tail," Socha toldLiveScience. "Snakes are part body and part tail, and they have ribs up until the tail. They flatten their ribs and make themselves Frisbee-like in form."

This gets them aerodynamically fit for gliding.

"As [the snake] starts falling, it starts sending large S-shaped waves through its body mostly by moving its head from side to side," Socha explained. "It also keeps its body parallel to the ground."

Since they don't have wings, snakes control their flight patterns by sort of slithering through the air. By undulating their bodies in an exaggerated S-shaped pattern, they maintain in-flight stability. It's sort of like how a tight-rope walker shifts weight from side to side to keep balance.

To get airborne, snakes either hang from a branch, search for a comfy landing spot, and drop, or they actively leap off the branch, which gives them a little more height and allows them to glide farther.

Socha isn't quite sure why snakes developed the ability to glide, but he suggests that they do it to save energy.

"Say you're in one tree and you want to get to another tree that's 50 feet away. You would have to climb down, slither across, and climb up the tree," he explained.

Turning in mid-air

The paradise tree snake seems to be the only species of flying snake that can turn mid-flight. Socha has found.

"There are some small clues to how turning works, but I don't have the details yet," he said. "When they are making the turn, it seems that the actual turning only occurs when their head is pointing in the direction they want to turn in."

Socha also studied Chrysopelea ornata, the golden tree snake. Both snakes live in the trees in the lowland tropical rainforests in South and Southeast Asia.

Most flying snakes - there are three additional species - grow about 3 to 4 feet long. They secrete a mild venom, but this is only hazardous to small prey - such as lizards, birds, frogs, and bats - and they are officially classified as harmless to humans.

Pythons Eat Entire Prey, Bones and All

Adult pythons can go months without a meal. But when they eat, nothing is wasted. These snakes have evolved a system to suck the calcium from their prey's skeleton, making for a more nutritious meal."They are therefore physiologically fine tuned to cope with prolonged fasting, re-feeding on large meals, and intense digestion and nutrient absorption," says Jean-Herve Lignot of Louis Pasteur University in France.

If binge eating were diagnosed in the reptile world, Burmese pythons would be said to have major eating disorders. They eat infrequently but devour their prey whole, bones and all.

"Juvenile pythons normally eat every week, while adults can have a meal every month and can even stop feeding for several months under certain circumstances," said study co-author Jean-Herv? Lignot of Louis Pasteur University in France.

But what good could the bones be?

A new study finds the snakes are equipped to suck the calcium from their meal's skeleton, making for a more nutrition-packed snack.

"They are therefore physiologically fine tuned to cope with prolonged fasting, re-feeding on large meals, and intense digestion and nutrient absorption," Lignot said.

The research, which was presented last weekend at the annual meeting of the Society of Experimental Biology in Glasgow, Scotland, shows just how fine-tuned the snakes are when it comes to getting the most out of food.

In the study, Lignot and Robert Pope of Indiana University South Bend monitored shape and temperature changes of the guts of Burmese pythons before and after they ate a meal. Soon after feeding, the replication and death of cells in the snakes' gut tissues went into overdrive as new cells formed and worn-out cells vanished. The scientists describe the process as a remodeling of the stomach and intestine to prepare for the next fasting and feeding cycles.

An analysis of the gut contents within hours of the snakes' feeding showed small particles that had come from the skeletons of their prey.

The scientists discovered a new cell type responsible for breaking down the boney bits for digestion. Shaped like golf tees, the specialized cells degrade the particles before releasing the elemental components into the bloodstream.

They suggest this process allows pythons to optimize their absorption of the bone's calcium from their meals.

Cobras Aim for Your Eyes

Spitting cobras don't actually spit. Rather, muscle contractions squeeze the cobra's venom gland, forcing venom to stream out of the snake's fangs and up 6 feet (nearly 2 meters) away. If they hit you in the eyes, the neurotoxin can blind you. And they do indeed aim for the eyes, scientists discovered in 2005. But wait, there's more. The venom is launched not in a stream but in a spray with a geometric pattern that's quite suited to nailing you in the eyes, scientists learned in January 2009.

To be effective, venom a cocktail of neurotoxins and tissue-attacking poisons must make contact with an attacker's eyes, where it causes severe pain and possibly blindness.

Turns out the venom does not hit a victim in just one spot. Instead, the venom lands in complex geometric patterns.

A European study in 2005 showed that cobras do aim for the eyes, but their venom is shot out in a spray rather than a stream.

Young and his team now have figured out how this spray is generated. They used high-speed photography and electromyography (EMG) to detect contractions of cobra head and neck muscles. The snakes engage their head and neck muscles a split second before "spitting" to rotate their heads, then jerk them from side to side.

"The venom-delivery system functions to propel the venom forward while the [head and neck] muscles produce rapid oscillations of the head that disperse the venom, presumably maximizing the chance that a portion of the spat venom will contact the eye," the researchers write in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.

World's Smallest Snake Could Curl Up on a Quarter

The smallest known snake, discovered in 2008 in Barbados, is just under four inches (10 cm) long and slim as a spaghetti noodle. Leptotyphlops carlae just might retain the title, too. "Snakes may be prevented by natural selection from becoming too small because, below a certain size, there may be nothing for their young to eat," says its discoverer, Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State

As slim as a spaghetti noodle and able to fit snugly on a U.S. quarter, a new species of snake has been found hiding out in a forest on Barbados. The reptilian runt is now the world's smallest snake.

Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State, discovered the snake, which just under four inches (10 cm) in length as an adult, in a fragment of forest on the eastern side of Barbados.

Hedges analyzed genetic material from the snake, which along with physical characteristics such as its unique color patterns and scales, provided evidence that the snake was indeed a new species of threadsnake, now dubbed Leptotyphlops carlae.

Snakes Go Months Without Food. And Grow!

Imagine if you could stop eating for months, burn fat, grow taller, and be just fine! Marshall McCue at the University of Arkansas withheld food from 62 snakes ratsnakes, western diamondback rattlesnakes and ball pythons for about six months, typical for snakes in the wild, McCue and colleagues said. The snakes reduced their metabolic rates to survive, some by up to 72 percent. Amazingly, they also got longer, burning up their fat stores. "These animals take energy reduction to a whole new level," McCue said.

Snakes can lower their metabolic rates by up to 70 percent, allowing them to survive prolonged periods without food while growing longer nonetheless, a new study shows.

These animals take energy reduction to a whole new level, said lead author Marshall McCue, a biology graduate student at the University of Arkansas.

The research, detailed in the September issue of the journalZoology, is an extension of McCue's past studies that revealed biochemical changes in the western diamondback rattlesnake.

McCue withheld food from 62 snakes belonging to one of three different species (ratsnake, western diamondback rattlesnake and ball python) for about six months and observed their metabolic rates. It is typical for snakes in the wild to go without food for this long. He found that snakes reduced their standard metabolic rates, some by up to 72 percent.

Snakes already had low energy demands. We didnt know they could go lower, McCue said.

Despite the lack of food, the snakes continued to grow in length. To me, this suggests that there must be a strong selective advantage to growing longer, McCue said. He added evolution has led to snakes that are extremely efficient at frugal use of available resources which come from within their own bodies.

During the first stages of starvation, all the snakes burned up selected fat stores. The next energy source to go differed among the snake species. The ratsnakes, which live in an environment with abundant rodent prey, began to break down proteins faster than the pythons or rattlesnakes.

The protein use was higher in the snakes less well-adapted to starvation, McCue said.

Understanding how snakes can succeed in food-scarce environments will add to the overall picture of snakes' evolution.