Bruce Jayne, a biologist, measured how wide a Burmese python could open its mouth. a lot of!
Burmese pythons are greedy diners who can devour almost anything passing through them—even the rather large white-tailed deer and other large mammals. So, is there a limit on the distance these slippery predators can open their jaws to prey on large prey? Maybe not, scientists have learned recently.
Compared with other snake , these pythons are huge in size, about 18 feet (5.5 meters) long and weigh 200 pounds (91 kg). However, a study published on August 25 in the journal Integrated Organism Biology (opened in a new tag) found that their circumference is not what determines why hungry pythons can swallow oversized food. Instead, the secret lies in the snake's open mouth—how wide they can open.
The biologist at the University of Cincinnati wanted to test how euthanized Burmese python (Python bivittatus) could stretch out his mouth and eat snacks. It is common (and mistakenly) that snakes can dislocate or loosen their jaws to swallow their prey. In fact, a elastic connective tissue extends from the snake's skull or skull to the jaw, allowing the animal to swallow the huge grub .
Bruce Jayne, the lead author of the study, biologist and professor at the University of Cincinnati, told Live Science: "The key to snakes is that they don't dislocate any joints at all while they swallow their prey." "But the joints between their bones are very flexible. Unlike the [human] chin, it is one piece, and in a snake, it is two pieces. Between these two pieces are connective tissue, skin and muscle."
All of these parts combine to form a highly mobile mechanism that allows the non-toxic python to open its mouth and swallow its prey. Once the animal is caught by a snake, the winding predator coils its long body around the victim to shrink the blood flow before swallowing it—whether the victim is dead or still breathing.
Scientists used a series of 3D printed plastic probes of different sizes to test different python individuals and used increasingly larger probes to measure the maximum amount each animal can open its mouth. The largest probe has a diameter of 9 inches (22 cm) and looks strikingly similar to the orange Home Depot bucket. Only one snake was able to open its mouth large enough to accommodate a huge detector: a python weighing about 130 pounds (59 kg) and 14 feet (4.3 m) in length.
In southwestern Florida, a Burmese python weighing 31.5 pounds is ruminated on a 35 pound white-tailed deer.
In southwestern Florida, a Burmese python weighing 31.5 pounds is ruminated on a 35 pound white-tailed deer. (Image source: Ian Bartozek)
"The probe is large enough to fit on my head," Jayne said. "To give you an idea of how big that specimen is, it's too big to fit into a 5 gallon [20 liter] barrel. That's a big barrel."
Burmese python is rich in the Florida Everglades, but it's an invasive species that can lead to a massive reduction in local animal populations. In this study, biologists worked with regional hunters to obtain euthanasia specimens that had been killed to help reduce the invading population. This limits the size of the snake that Jayne and his team can test in the experiment.
"I wish I could get bigger pythons because one thing people have been wondering about is what the biggest gap is," Jayne said. “I believe some people have a crack diameter that can be as high as 30 inches [76 cm].”
comparison of brown tree snakes with Burmese pythons, showing the upper limit of size each specimen can swallow.
The study also found that not all snakes can open their mouths like Burmese pythons just because snakes have highly adaptable jaws.When biologists tested the gaps in the palm tree snake (Boigaregularism), another invasive species that feeds on birds, lizards and small rodents, they found that the palm tree snake was about the same length as the Burmese python, but was much smaller and could not open its mouth like their larger Burmese cousin.
"The scale between these two species is surprising," Jayne said. "If you compare gaps to mass, the two species will be very similar. But pythons, even after correcting this fact, are heavier snakes and still have larger gaps."
However, Jayne warns that pythons can open their mouths, does not mean that all their food is made up of large mammals. In fact, most of their diets include small animals such as rabbit , fox and raccoon .
"The anatomy of the snakes sets an upper limit on what they can eat because they don't take a bite from their prey, but swallow them all," he said. "Just because they have this anatomical ability does not mean that they use it often. Many times, prey is hard to catch and swallow. I'm very interested in following up and understanding their anatomy."
