Despite being tragically misunderstood by most people, snakes are adorable, diverse and intelligent animals that deserve our respect. Almost 4,000 unique species of snakes live within the territory. snakes suborder, and more is found all the time.
These strict carnivores use a variety of methods to hunt, capture and eat their prey, from slowly constricting it to using a fast-acting poison, or even simply swallowing it whole after an ambush.
Understanding the diet of these animals helps us better understand why they are so important from an environmental point of view. In fact, many species help control populations of pests such as rats and mice, and snakes in general are far less dangerous to humans than what you think Hollywold and the media are.
Let’s take a closer look at what snakes and their favorite prey eat!
First, why are all snakes carnivorous?
As we briefly touched on earlier, all snake species are 100% carnivorous. This means they never eat plant material such as leaves or vegetables. To this day, scientists and researchers have not been able to find a single species of snakes that eat plants in any quantity. There are not even omnivorous snakes that sometimes eat plants.
Snake bodies are simply not designed to get or digest nutrients from plants. This is mainly due to the very short digestive tracts of these animals and the fact that they tend to swallow their prey whole without chewing even once.
Plus, plants simply don’t have enough calories to maintain them, even if they could digest them properly. The digestive tract of a snake is adapted to eat very dense, high-calorie foods such as small prey, and most snakes only eat once every few weeks or so as their food is slowly destroyed in the stomach.
Without the gut bacteria needed to destroy plants, or some way to get enough calories from them, snakes simply don’t find plant material worth eating.
So what food do snakes eat if plants are banned? The answer is many, many protein-rich carnivores (and sometimes their eggs)!
In general, snakes prefer live prey because they get much more nutrients from live animals than from dead ones. They will not hunt for something that is already dead and decaying, although in some cases they will eat the eggs of various animals such as birds, fish and even other snakes and reptiles, since the eggs are rich in the protein and nutrients they need. and their easy targets for them.
In addition, most snake species are quite small, 2 to 4 feet long, so they prefer to chase prey animals that they can swallow whole without any problem.
This means you don’t have to worry about snakes eating people as we have too many problems to worry about. In fact, snakes eat many small and medium-sized carnivorous animals, such as:
- Mice and rats
- Various other rodents such as rabbits and chipmunks.
- Birds
- Frogs and toads
- A fish
- Invertebrates such as earthworms and slugs
- Other snakes, especially babies and juveniles
- The bats
- Lizards
- Eggs of various species of mammals, birds and reptiles
Surprisingly, larger snake species like anacondas and pythons will eat larger animals like monkeys, deer, and capybaras! There are several reported cases of anacondas attacking animals such as jaguars and lions, although this is very rare and usually out of desperation, for example if they are starving or sick.
How do snakes hunt prey?
Snakes are incredibly fierce predators because they have no legs to run or limbs to grab onto!
They use various methods and techniques to make it easier for them to hunt for prey, for example, injecting deadly poison or slowly squeezing the prey until the animals begin to choke and lose consciousness. Some snakes will chase their prey for hours, waiting for the right moment to strike in the blink of an eye.
In addition to these ingenious mechanisms, snakes have a very keen sense of smell. They use their tongue to gather information about nearby animals to track them over long distances, and research shows that many species, such as rattlesnakes, are even capable of sensing the body heat of nearby animals.
They flick their forked tongues towards the ground as they slide, in turn transmitting whatever information they collect to their Jacobson organ (also sometimes simply called the vomer-nasal organ), which is located in the palate.
This organ helps snakes determine how far away a prey animal is, or even what specific type of animal they are! Sometimes it can also help snakes determine if there is a predator nearby that could be dangerous to them.