Spurred on by a few fictional viral posts, this is one of the most pervasive snake-myths on social media, yet it is one of the least credible.
Imagine you’re the most successful ambush predator on the planet. You are capable of sitting still and perfectly camouflaged for days, weeks, even longer, if necessary… just waiting for that perfect opportunity to spring a surprise attack on your prey, launching your gripping jaws at their head, then quickly overwhelming their desperate struggles with several coils of pure muscle, squeezing the life from your prey in minutes.
Now imagine if, before you could launch your surprise attack, you had to stretch out beside your prey to see if they were an appropriate size first. In that context, you can quickly see that exposing yourself to take measurements wouldn’t be an effective hunting strategy for any predator, especially a camouflaged ambush predator like a large python or boa.
So how DO snakes size up their meals? The sad truth is, they generally don’t. While they tend to prefer safe, familiar prey that they have experience eating, snakes are opportunistic predators, generally taking prey whenever they can, since they never know when they’ll have the opportunity to eat again. Guided by scent and/or heat, non-venomous snakes typically try to launch their jaws at the head, hopefully incapacitating the prey’s ability to bite defensively, and providing a solid anchor-point to wrap the prey in several coils in order to constrict circulation & increasing vascular pressure to the point of cardiac arrest. A snake can consume prey much larger than their own girth, so a very hungry snake will have a go at almost anything it can successfully overpower, which will be proportional to the snake’s size.
In fact, a hungry snake who makes a successful kill often won’t realize that the prey item is too large until they run into difficulty swallowing it. In rare instances, an overly-eager snake can cause serious damage to themselves in the process and, in very rare cases, even death. Typically, however, once a snake realizes they’re in over their head, they will regurgitate the prey immediately. A snake’s only defence is their mouth full of teeth, so they’re quick to give up on a meal when they feel too vulnerable or threatened while trying to swallow a large meal.
When your pet snake stretches out next to you, however, they’re only seeking cover, warmth or simply exploring. A snake in hunting/feeding mode behaves very differently – coiled, tense muscles and ready to strike – and that behaviour becomes very easy to identify for an experienced keeper. Feeding is the very last thing on the mind of a vulnerable, exposed pet snake that’s stretched out beside you.
