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Here's today's nightmare fodder ...
We are accustomed to images of snakes swallowing their prey. A few snakes rip mouthfuls from their dead prey. For the first time, a snake - the Asian kukri snake - has been observed burying its head into the abdomen of its preferred prey (toads) and taking its time supping on the still-living amphibian's organs.
:nails: :sick2:
FULL STORY (With Photos):
https://www.livescience.com/snakes-disembowel-toads.html
We are accustomed to images of snakes swallowing their prey. A few snakes rip mouthfuls from their dead prey. For the first time, a snake - the Asian kukri snake - has been observed burying its head into the abdomen of its preferred prey (toads) and taking its time supping on the still-living amphibian's organs.
:nails: :sick2:
Snakes disembowel toads and feast on the living animal's organs one by one
This gruesome behavior was previously unknown in snakes.
Pity the toads that encounter Asian kukri snakes in Thailand. These snakes use enlarged, knifelike teeth in their upper jaws to slash and disembowel toad prey, plunging their heads into the abdominal cavities and feasting on the organs one at a time while the toads are still alive, leaving the rest of the corpse untouched.
While you're recovering from the horror of that sentence, "perhaps you'd be pleased to know that kukri snakes are, thankfully, harmless to humans," amateur herpetologist and naturalist Henrik Bringsøe, lead author in a new study describing the gruesome technique, said in a statement.
This grisly dining habit was previously unknown in snakes; while some rip chunks from their prey, most snakes gulp down their meals whole. Scientists had never before seen a snake Bury its head inside an animal's body to slurp up organs — sometimes taking hours to do so, Bringsøe and his colleagues reported. ...
The victims of this horrific organ-slurping were poisonous toads called Duttaphrynus melanostictus, also known as Asian common toads or Asian black-spotted toads ...
During the deadly battle, the toads fought "vigorously" for their lives, with some defensively secreting a toxic white substance, according to the study. The snakes' grisly evisceration strategy could be a way to avoid the toad's poisonous secretions while still enjoying a tasty meal, the researchers wrote.
Kukri snakes in the Oligodon genus are so named because their slashing teeth resemble the kukri, a forward-curving machete from Nepal. While kukri snakes aren't a threat to people, their teeth can cause painful lacerations that bleed heavily, because the snakes secrete an anticoagulant from specialized oral glands, according to the study.
"This secretion, produced by two glands, called Duvernoy's glands and located behind the eyes of the snakes, are likely beneficial while the snakes spend hours extracting toad organs," Bringsøe explained. ...
FULL STORY (With Photos):
https://www.livescience.com/snakes-disembowel-toads.html