This article goes into detail about how some snakes can eat prey that are fattily harmful to them. In one example it talks about how a coral snake would eat its own suborders and these suborder snakes would be as large as the snake itself. The way the snake can digest these huge snakes is by a processed of scrunching up their prey's body once they have been swallowed. In the most bizarre example, It shows a snake with a massive centipede eating its way out back out of it.
Turns out the centipede was still alive when swallowed and ate through all of the snakes internal organs but died when it was almost completely out of the snake. Another example is when a
grass snake (Natrix matrix) tried to digest an introduced fish species, a brown bullhead fish (Ameiurus nebulous). When the fish was passing through the snake one of the spikey bones of the fish pierced the snakes abdomen and the snake died.
Most of the occurrences in prey resulting death happened with juveniles due to biting off more than they could choose. In this article it also described how introduced species caused a great deal of these deaths by meals.
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/when-predators-bite-more-they-can-chew
3 comments:
Wow. The centipede picture is gruesome!
They see this issue in the piraiba, a large South American catfish, which often becomes over agressive and attacks prey much larger than itself, ultimately suffocating the individual. One story claims that a piraiba attacked a adolescent boy!
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