Remember this corpulent carpet python?
What had he eaten, why and what happened over the following weeks? These are the questions I will attempt to answer.
What happened over the following weeks was that the large lump visible in the 'before' photo moved slowly along the body, becoming steadily smaller all the time. In fact, towards the end two lumps could be distinguished. Two lumps means two animals. The snake had eaten something reasonably sizeable when another potential meal came conveniently close. These snakes are opportunistic feeders and never let a chance go by, so in went the second one.
Totally incapable of movement, and with enough food to last for a long time, the snake settled down to digest its food. Digesting is simply the process of making food particles small enough to pass through the wall of the digestive tract and into the blood. Digestion in snakes, as in humans, is achieved by enzymes in the digestive juices. One of the differences is that we chew our food. Chewed food has a greater surface area for the enzymes to act on and so digests faster.
Slowly, slowly the bodies of the eaten animals were broken down, leading to smaller lumps, lots of food particles in the snake's blood and, ultimately, a quantity of faeces as all the indigestible material (such as bone) was ejected. The whole process took about four weeks.
In all this it is worth remembering that, being reptiles, snakes do not need a lot of energy to keep their bodies at a stable temperature and so the energy and structural materials delivered by this apparently leisurely process were more than enough to keep the snake going for a considerable time. In fact, most snakes in cooler climates will go without food all winter because they cannot get warm enough to either catch prey (warmer bodies mean faster movement) or even digest it if they did (so, yes, digestive rate depends on temperature too).
Not a great surprise then that they are so active when the warmer weather finally does arrive.
What had he eaten, why and what happened over the following weeks? These are the questions I will attempt to answer.
What happened over the following weeks was that the large lump visible in the 'before' photo moved slowly along the body, becoming steadily smaller all the time. In fact, towards the end two lumps could be distinguished. Two lumps means two animals. The snake had eaten something reasonably sizeable when another potential meal came conveniently close. These snakes are opportunistic feeders and never let a chance go by, so in went the second one.
Totally incapable of movement, and with enough food to last for a long time, the snake settled down to digest its food. Digesting is simply the process of making food particles small enough to pass through the wall of the digestive tract and into the blood. Digestion in snakes, as in humans, is achieved by enzymes in the digestive juices. One of the differences is that we chew our food. Chewed food has a greater surface area for the enzymes to act on and so digests faster.
Slowly, slowly the bodies of the eaten animals were broken down, leading to smaller lumps, lots of food particles in the snake's blood and, ultimately, a quantity of faeces as all the indigestible material (such as bone) was ejected. The whole process took about four weeks.
In all this it is worth remembering that, being reptiles, snakes do not need a lot of energy to keep their bodies at a stable temperature and so the energy and structural materials delivered by this apparently leisurely process were more than enough to keep the snake going for a considerable time. In fact, most snakes in cooler climates will go without food all winter because they cannot get warm enough to either catch prey (warmer bodies mean faster movement) or even digest it if they did (so, yes, digestive rate depends on temperature too).
Not a great surprise then that they are so active when the warmer weather finally does arrive.