Python eats Squirrel in Enclosure
Like 5 Dislike 0 Published on 27 Apr 2018
Dangers of feeding live rodents to reptiles.
This video helps reptile keepers understand why feeding live rodents to reptiles can be dangerous, especially left unattended. Graphic parts edited for YouTube. Squirrels humanely dispatched.
Video taken on March 25, 2007 of a Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus) taking a feeder squirrel. Part 1 of 2.
Instructional video is part of a body of work that focuses on the science of reptile feeding behavior that supported a master's thesis in zoology. Currently working on PhD in reptile venom research.
Read below for detailed physiological explanations of the feeding mechanism seen in video.
Let us know if you have any questions.
A snake's jaws are connected with tendons, ligaments, and hinge joints that gives this python's skull a gymnast's flexibility.
Jaws of snakes do not dislocate. One of the enduring myths of snake feeding mechanisms is that the jaws detach. They stay connected all the time. However, as seen in the video, the two lower jaws move independently of one another.
Also, a snake's lower jaw is not joined at the front as mammal jaws are, but by an elastic ligament that allows the two halves to spread apart (connected by an elastic ligament) at the front. Each lower jaw moves independently.
Quadrate bones at the back of snake's skulls (at attachment points to lower jaws) are not rigidly attached. They pivot allowing vertical and horizontal rotation; this allows ingestion of large prey such as this pig.
The pterygoid bone(or plate) in the roof of a snake's mouth has an "inner row" of teeth. This plate with the attached teeth move separately from the jaws to help "walk" their teeth over food and down the throat.
Close up video shows the “transport cycle” also called a pterygoid walk: the python opens its jaw and alternately ratchets its upper jaw(two rows of teeth) over the surface of the meal, in turn “walking” its mouth over and around the food object.
Filmed with the University of Guadalajara for Biological and Agricultural Sciences, the division of Biological and Environmental Science Division, at the department of Botany and Zoology.
Video is for the citation for junior high school, and high school science reports. Also recommended for college and graduate level source citation for zoological biostatistics.