PYTHONS AND THEIR PREY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14145, 21 August 1909, Page 5 (Supplement)

PYTHONS AND THEIR PREY.

The ability of snakes to perform feats of swallowing their prey is astounding. . Recently a small boa, scarcely four feet in length, with a head no larger than a man's

thumb, swallowed a full-grown pigeon. We

put the pigeon in the cage at night, says a writer in the Scientific American, think-

ing that an Indian python seven or eight feet long would take it, but a great swel-

ling in the body of the little boa showed what had become of the bird. As no snake chews or rends his prey, we knew that it passed his head and throat entire. The enlargement did not disappear for a week.

" Long Tom," a giant reticulated python, fed on a pig weighing forty-five pounds. We wanted to get some photographs of the monster reptile taking large prey, so the pig was put in the den alive; but as his prey had been killed for him

in captivity, the snake got frightened when the pig began to move about and squeal, and backed away. When the pig was killed, and he smelled the blood, he took the animal at once, and in twenty-five minutes it had disappeared. The pig is, however, an easy object to swallow, compared with a dense pelage of fur or feathersFor two or three days the stomach was enlarged to almost the size of a beer keg, but on the third day the swelling began to diminish, and by the end of the fifth the body had returned to it« normal diameter. Contrary to common belief, these big snakes will generally soon learn, to take their prey after it has been killed. We usually feed them on chickens or rabbits, killed, but while still warm. We have, however, fed them with cold-storage rabbits that were killed in Australia. Miss Grace Clark, the snake charmer, says that she once had a snake that would take a chicken after it was dressed and cut into pieces, receiving the pieces one at a time. A few months ago we wanted to feed a very large pigeon to a very small Indian python. In order to save him the trouble of working over the shoulders, we cut off the wings. After gorging the bird, we offered him the wings, which he took and swallowed.

j The python which swallowed the pig was received from Carl Hagenbeck of Hamburg, Germany, in July, 1907. He has a photograph of it in the act of swallowing an Indian antelope weighing over 90 pounds. He had another reticulated python, _ which swallowed a 971b ibex. A python in the Cincinnati zoological gardens swallowed a goat weighing 421bs. All of the goat that passed intact were the horns, the hoofs, and a piece of sash, rope four feet long attached to his neck. We recently had a big reticulated python, winch passed the hoofs of a pig. They were shown to Dr. W. T. Hornaday, the director of the New York Zoological Park, who identified them as the hoofs of' the Bornean wild pig, of about 40 pounds weight. A ship's captain, in bringing over a large reticulated python, found in the excrement the quills of a. Javan porcupine, lying in the relative position they occupied on the animal's body. The rentile must have begun with the head, extending the coils backward over the body, and pressing the quills down horizontally in their natural state of rest. Evidently, this is a species of prey a snake could not disgorge. The teeth of the python are numerous. In the upper jaw there is a row of teeth in the maxillary, and a second tow, set at considerable distance inside the first and imbedded in the palatine bones. In the lower jaw there is but one row of teeth, that of the inferior maxillary, but it is really double, as there is a "line of tiny teeth just inside the larger ones. The teeth are all acutely conical in form, smooth and with no cavities, depressions, or ridges, and set so that they point toward the back of the mouth. They serve merely for catching and holding the prey. As there are no particles of decaying food on the tooth to be carried into the wound and produce blood poisoning, a bite from one of these monsters usually heals quickly. In seeking his prey, the python depends much more on his sense of smell than on that of sight. It is always dangerous to go near these Big snakes with the smell of any bird or mammal on the hands or clothing. When they are hungry and scent their natural food, they will strike at the first thing they see moving. They will even strike at inanimate objects "which have come in touch with their natural prey. One evening we were feeding a big python. For some reason it dropped' the prey, and to get him to return to the chicken, a woollen duster was pushed toward his head. Instantly he struck and seized the duster in his teeth. His jaws had to be prized open to make him let go. Under similar circumstances, a python seized -and swallowed a blanket. After retaining it for two days, he disgorged the article, rolled into a compact wad. The sense of taste in the serpents is very keen. If chickens are kept in a dirty box, these reptiles will refuse to feed on them. If a python bites into the crop of a chicken containing bad-tasting matter, he will drop the chicken. To test the sensibilities of the serpents, a black snake was once given a stale egg. This species is very fond of eggs, but no sooner had the shell broken in his stomach than he commenced vomiting, and continued till the stomach was completely evacuated. It is a common belief that snakes are so plentiful in India, that one can scarcely walk without stepping on them. This is erroneous. It is possible to live for considerable periods of time in that country without so much as catching the glimpse of a snake. And this is especially true when we confine our references to the big pythons. Dr. Hornaday spent'two years hunting in India and Borneo, and yet he declares he never saw but one python, and that was a very small one. The pythons are timid and shy, and lie coiled among the foliage of trees or shrubs, or in the dense grass on the ground. They never attack man or the large animals eo long as they are unmolested.