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Oct. 5th, 2005 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselking
Headless python explodes after trying to swallow a whole alligator.
A meeting between two of the largest and fiercest predators in the Everglades -- a Burmese python and an American alligator -- ended in a scene as rare as it was bizarre. The 13-foot-snake and six-foot gator both wound up dead, locked so gruesomely it is hard to make heads, tails or any other body part of either creature.
When the carcasses were found last week in an isolated marsh in Everglades National Park, the gator's tail and hind legs protruded from the ruptured gut of a python -- which had swallowed it whole.
As an added touch of the macabre, the snake's head was missing.
While unusual, it's not unheard of for a snake to consume prey that proves too hard or large to digest. Things like claws, hooves or bones can damage the snake's internal organs. The bulk of a victim can put pressure on the snake's lungs, essentially suffocating it from within.
Slowed by the extra weight, the snake might have been attacked by another gator, which could explain a missing python head.
Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor and expert on crocodiles and gators in the Glades, said a similar scenario could have happened even if the gator were dead because of a quirk of its nervous system. Until a gator's spinal cord is severed and literally stirred into jelly with a special tool, he said, "a dead alligator gives a remarkably good imitation of being alive. One of the things they do is they move their legs like they're walking. Those claws are pretty sharp. It could tear through the [snake's] skin."
Mazzotti said it's also plausible the snake scavenged a dead gator. Then time, decay and heat could explain what happened next: a nasty blowout of the snake body.
"You've got a deteriorating carcass, you've got a buildup of gases, you've got sharp claw points . . . ," he said.
EDIT: A bigger, better picture.
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Date: 2005-10-06 02:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-07 09:13 am (UTC)