In the animal kingdom, chewing is a powerful ability because chewing makes food finer, and when chewing is mixed with saliva secreted by the salivary glands, the food also becomes a semi-liquid that is easier to swallow and digest. However, most animals, especially carnivores, do not chew, such as tigers, lions and other animals, they rely on split teeth to tear their prey into the right size, and then swallow it directly.
Carnivore tooth structure
When encountering bones, most carnivores will also use cracked teeth to release a strong bite force to crush the bones, and then eat the bone marrow inside. Of course, there are also some animals, they like to "swallow dates", such as owls, many old people used to say that owls will spit out a "hairball" before dying, in fact, this is just the normal operation of owls, they often spit out hairballs, and this hairball is not actually a "essence", but a ball composed of indigestible hair, bones, etc.
So, will the same python, which eats dates and has a larger prey, spit out indigestible bones like owls? The answer is no, because no matter what animal you eat, there will be no dregs left in the belly of the python, what is going on? Let's find out together.
Master hunter - python
Python is the collective name of all snakes under the python family, there are currently 11 known pythons, although they are of different lengths, but the body is very thick. Among the pythons, the largest are the reticulated python and the Burmese python, the average body length of these two pythons is about 4 meters, the largest known reticulated python was killed in Indonesia in 1912, when there were accurate measurements, the body length was 10 meters.
The Burmese python is second only to the reticulated python is the second largest python in existence, and the largest known Burmese python is a female from the Illinois Snake Safari Park in the United States, with a body length of 8.2 meters and a weight of 183 kilograms.
All pythons are carnivorous, and they are fierce and have a strong hunting ability, especially large pythons, we take the largest python reticulated python as an example, reticulated python is a kind of python that mainly lives in the rainforests and arable land of Southeast Asia, pythons swallow people in recent years, and the culprit is usually it.
Reticulated pythons are pythons with poor eyesight, they can only see objects moving nearby, so in order to better survive and hunt, they spend their time at night. Like other pythons, there are a large number of heat-sensing cells in the lip socket of reticulated pythons, and this organ, like the cheek fossa of pit vipers, can timely transmit heat energy to the brain when encountering thermostatic animals to form a visual quadrupian, which is what we often call "thermal imaging", so even in the dark night, reticulated pythons can accurately perceive nearby thermostatic animals.
The lip fossa is shown in the picture
It is precisely because of this that reticulated pythons prefer to "wait for rabbits", they usually lurk in the grass waiting for the prey to pass, once the prey is found, the reticulated python will quickly bite the prey, although the bite force of the python is average, but their mouth is full of barb-like teeth, once these teeth are embedded in the skin of the prey, it is almost impossible to break free.
Tooth structure of a python
When biting the prey, the reticulated python will quickly use the body to entangle the prey, and when the winding is completed, the prey is basically declared dead, because the thick body of the python can release a strong winding force, once American scientists used the body to do a winding experiment of the senpai, when the selected senpai body length is only 4.5 meters, and the scientists are also wearing special protective clothing, as a result, when the senpai tightened did not even hold on to 5 seconds and was forced to stop the experiment.
Like adult reticulated pythons, a reticulated python with a body length of 4-5 meters can strangle an adult cow alive, and in the process of strangling, the cow's ribs are basically broken.
Therefore, large pythons are like a big killer, they can kill prey that weighs several times heavier than themselves, and once bitten by them, they can hardly break free, and can only slowly wait to entangle to death.
A python with the "Bone Transformation" skill
After killing the prey, the python will open its mouth to swallow objects more than 2 times thicker than their own diameter, and through the continuous squirming of their teeth, they can slowly send the prey into the body, which perfectly explains what is "swallowing dates", and after swallowing the whole one, the python is not only frightened, otherwise the prey will eventually melt into bone slag in its body.
As early as 2019, foreign scientists used experiments to let us see the strong digestive ability of pythons, when scientists used X-rays to record a python that ate crocodiles, to know that crocodiles are hard bones, and the hard scales on its body are not easy to digest.
However, in the python's body, it only took four days, the python's digestive juice through penetration into the crocodile's body to decompose all the soft tissues of the crocodile, only the skin and bones remained, by the fifth day, the crocodile skin was digested even the residue was not left, on the sixth day the digestive juice began to decompose the crocodile's bones, and on the seventh day, the crocodile bones all disappeared, including the thick and hard skull, so far, it took seven days for the python to completely decompose the crocodile. (The picture below shows an X-ray of the python's abdomen on the seventh day)
Through further analysis and research, scientists found that after eating, pythons' internal organs will become larger, especially the heart, pancreas and liver, which provides power for metabolic acceleration, and within 24 hours after eating, the python's stomach acid pH value can change from the usual 7 to 2 (equal to strong acid), these powerful digestive juices can even corrode metals, let alone bones.
However, although the python is strong, but after eating, the python will have a long period of weakness, they must find a safe place to slowly digest the prey without moving, as for how long the weakness period lasts depending on the size of the prey, for example, in 2010, American scientists used imaging technology to observe a Burmese python that swallowed mice, and found that even if the prey is not large, it took 132 hours for the Burmese python to digest the mouse, and larger prey will take longer.
Write at the end
Python has sharp teeth but no ability to chew, and the larger mouth allows them to swallow the prey whole, it is because of this way of eating, pythons have evolved a strong digestive ability, they can swallow some large prey whole, using a period of time and strong internal organs and digestive juices to digest the bones of the prey, so pythons will not spit out bones.
However, it is worth mentioning that animal hair and feathers are a special protein that makes stomach acid helpless, so animal hair or feathers will be excreted from the cloaca by pythons in the form of "feces and urine mixture".
Finally, the python after eating is not at the mercy of others, because the python will spit out its prey again when threatened, so as to facilitate its own danger.
#蟒蛇吞食大型动物后, are the bones of the prey digested or spit out? #