How Do Snakes Eat?

Reader Contribution by Elizabeth Gatto
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The way snakes eat can be confusing to people because snakes eat prey that is much larger than their mouth.  Also, they don’t have limbs to help them capture their food.  Sometimes, it appears that they eat animals much bigger than their body’s entire girth. When it comes to how these animals feed, there have been lots of explanations of the mechanics of the jaw, digestion cycle of the prey, as well as how the food travels through the gastro-intestinal system and all of these factors play a part. The major aim of this post is to help you learn how snakes are able to get their prey in their mouth.  Also, it is important you know that there are professional wildlife experts who can handle snakes, should you ever need help relocating a snake from your property.

Snakes are carnivorous animals by nature which means that they feed on other animals in order to survive. They don’t have the appropriate type of teeth or limbs to enable them to eat other animals in pieces the way that most carnivores do.  As a result of a lack of a proper set of teeth, they eat their prey whole. Whenever they want to eat, they will identify their prey by picking up its scent with a flick of their tongue. Young snakes will eat smaller animals for survival. These could be rats, lizards, eggs, earthworms, birds, frogs as well as other rodents. For those bigger snakes which are matured, they will eat monkeys, pigs, deer and other big animals.

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