Gans, the egg-eating snake, possesses a small body but can open its mouth extremely wide, allowing it to swallow large, spherical bird eggs whole.
After swallowing the entire egg, the Gans egg-eating snake twists its body to break the egg and spit out the shell. Photo: Bruce Jayne
Pythons are famous for their ability to devour enormous meals. However, one species of snake stands out above all others, consuming prey larger than any other relative to its body size, Live Science reported on September 8th.
Named the Gans' egg-eating snake ( Dasypeltis gansi ), this non-venomous African snake can open its mouth wide enough to swallow an entire spherical bird egg, despite its small size, only about 102 cm long. Its ability to devour prey much larger than itself stems from the stretchy skin connecting the right and left lower jawbones, allowing the snake to open its jaws extremely wide, according to research published in the August issue of the Journal of Zoology .
"They appear to hold the world record for mouth opening size relative to overall size. Their capabilities are even more impressive than those of the Burmese python," said study author Bruce Jayne, a biology professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.
In fact, the Gans egg-eating snake can swallow prey 3-4 times larger than common snakes, such as the black rat snake ( Patronophis obsoletus ). Jayne tested the Gans egg-swallowing ability in the laboratory. He fed the animal a quail egg. After swallowing the whole egg, it twisted its body to break it, eventually regurgitating the broken shell. The entire process took 15-30 minutes.
Jayne explained that the fact that Gans snakes eat eggs, which are almost toothless, is quite useful because it prevents the liquid inside the eggs from spilling out when swallowed. Swallowing something relatively harmless, hard, and slippery is difficult. Sharp teeth would cause the contents of the eggs to leak out if they punctured the shell, Jayne explained.
CT scans show the maximum mouth opening size of a rat snake (left) and an egg-eating snake (right) of the same body length. Photo: Bruce Jayne
This wasn't the first time Jayne had examined the mouth size of pythons. Last year, he studied how wide the Burmese python ( Python bivittatus ) opens its mouth and discovered that they can devour impressively large prey. In the wild, they can swallow an entire deer. However, the Gans egg-eating snake can eat prey with a cross-sectional area more than twice that of a Burmese python of the same weight.
Jayne explains that this "superpower" is a way for Gans egg-eating snakes to survive, as most bird eggs are plump and spherical, while mouse eggs are usually more elongated. Bird eggs pose a greater challenge for snakes that cannot open their mouths wide. Gans egg-eating snakes have developed the ability to open their mouths extremely wide, allowing them to specialize in swallowing large meals. One advantage of eating eggs is that the eggs don't move or fight back like living creatures.
Thu Thao (According to Live Science )
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