How Do Boas Hunt For Food ?
When it comes to snakes, you might consider that most of them are venomous. They inject the venom from their sharp teeth to kill the victims and eat them. On the contrary, most snakes are nonvenomous.
First, boas have special olfactory functions, and they track the direction of the prey by detecting its body temperature or smell. When boas search for food, they will stick out their tongues that vibrate frequently to collect odor particles from the environment. Then, odor particles will be delivered to the vomeronasal organ, called Jacobson's organ from the roof of the oral cavity. According to the research, the bottom of boas’ tongues is the most sensitive position to environment detection. When setting the target, unlike other carnivore animals which chase their prey, boas will hide themselves nearby and wait for ambushing unsuspected prey.
Take Boas for example, they are a kind of snakes that their teeth do not produce venom, and they belong to carnivore animals. They feed on lizards, animals’ eggs, snails, and even mammals. You might be curious about how boas hunt for their prey without venom, and even the prey is bigger than them. There are three steps that boas hunt for food.
Next, when boas target the prey, they will use their body to coil the prey. As the prey approach, boas tend to use their teeth to start the hunt. After seizing the prey by their teeth, they intend to entangle the prey rather than other snakes, such as asps, elapids inject animals with venom. When they seize a prey, they coil their body around it as tight as possible to prevent them from struggling to escape or striking back against them. At the same time, the strong coiling forces the prey to be unable to breathe continuously and then it will peg out from lack of oxygen. However, this action won’t break the prey’s bones, it just forces the prey to be suffocated.
Last, when boas enjoy their prey, they start at the animal's head. Therefore, they will shift the animal's head forward at first. However, boas won’t chew the food. They swallow and digest the prey with chemical substances. Boas’ palatines are not completely knitted so that they have more flexible spaces to swallow the prey which are larger than them. Besides, they have special joints inside their skulls which help their upper and lower jaws open wider. Then, boas let their heads walk side to side so that the food will be pushed into their body easily. The elastic ligaments between their bones also help their bodies stretch more flexibly. It takes approximately a week for boas to digest the prey, and even the larger animal they swallowed will need more than two months to be completely digested.
In conclusion, boas search for the food by detecting their body temperature initially. Then, they use their teeth to seize the prey and entangle them so that make them suffocated. Finally, boas swallow their prey from head and digest them for a period of the time. We can find that the way boas hunt for the prey is more boorish than other snakes. The sizes of the animals they catch are almost larger than themselves. Some of them are even aggressive and dangerous. Thus, unlike other venomous snakes which use venom to hunt for the smaller size of prey, boas tend to suffocate the larger animals by coiling them tightly to reduce the risk of being attacked. Above all, we can get to a point from the hunting process that all animals have their manners to catch the prey, even though they belong to the same suborder or type.
Sources:
Naomi Millburn. How Does the Python Catch Its Prey?
https://animals.mom.com/python-catch-its-prey-9100.html
Oddly Cute Pets. How Do Snakes Catch Their Prey And Subdue It?
https://oddlycutepets.com/how-do-snakes-catch-their-prey/
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Snake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake
National Geographic. Snakes
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/facts/snakes-1
Dawn. (2008). How does a snake eat things bigger than its head
https://www.dawn.com/news/309805/how-does-a-snake-eat-things-bigger-than-its-head
張鈞翔. 蛇年談蛇
Pictures from: