From the first litter this season, a nice sized boa constrictor litter containing 28 foot long baby snakes. 20/28 have shed after only 1 week out of their embryonic sac that the 7 foot Mother boa constrictor imperator , incubates maternaly for 123 days.
And of those 20 who had shed (the first shed is when you typically wait to feed the neonates) 13 of those have now officially had their first meals. Within the first hour of having a live 10 fuzzy mouse tossed into their bins over half of the 20 I purchased had been or were in the process of being consumed when I checked after an hour.
That is 65% of those that I tried smart enough to figure it out within 60 minutes of ever seeing another live thing in their enclosure or even knowing what a mouse is!. They are only 10 days old!! They have all this instinct built in on how to hunt, stock, constrict , kill and consume their prey.
They know exactly how to survive without a single lesson from Mom or anyone for that matter. They already understand how wrapping and squeezing there prey in the correct positions. They have already chosen to be left or right handed so to say and choose a direction either clock-wise or counter clock-wise to begin their circle that squeezes the prey tight, which they will always use consistently every time after that. They know this will eventually result in no pulse or movement and that then it is time to let go and begin searching with their forked tongue which is relaying the information back into their Jacobson's gland at the base of their mouths. They look for the head first cause eating backwards could cause damage and entangle in their ribcages through the digestion process if they eat it hind first. They "sniff" the head out and then begin to unclamp their jaws. A 3 part system that allows them to temporally unlock joints in their jaw to allow for larger prey items. The whole process takes mere minutes from the introduction to a mouse to consumed whole and just a bump in the belly.
Truly some amazing creatures....
Here are a 2 that were first to shed and I managed to do a shoot with on Monday. I decided to try something new and only using ambient light available in my living room.
2013 Motley
2013 Hypo Motley
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40 Bci's
3.3 Corn snakes
