Reptile & Amphibian Forums

How dose an anaconda eat a turtle dose it constrict it or dose it go down alive? Still sucks for the turtle eather way.

Turtles are usually swallowed alive and have been known to injure anacondas during the process. Anacondas have even been killed from the injuries received during this swallowing process. I believe Renee would be able to give more details on this type of predation by wild anacondas.

Kelly

thanx kelly i have read your artical in reptile magizene on breeding green anacondas about 600 times i read it about twice a day its a really great artical.

Yes, it's hard to constrict a turtle, even as an anaconda, so typically they hang on to them and drown them, as far as anyone can tell...which you can imagine takes a VERY long time. Once we had a large female that, despite her size, had "eyes bigger than her stomach", er, or her mouth, more acurrately. I'll see if I can find the photo - poor thing tore one side of her mouth horribly from trying to swallow a too-wide, rather sharp-shelled turtle (one of the larger species of side-necked turtles.) They can be pretty determined; twice I've seen a large female have to regurgitate a white-tailed deer after getting thw whole body in her mouth, because once she got to the antlers there was just now way it was going to fit.

RO

WOW!!! must be a huge snake to take down a deer. did the snake that tried to swallow the turtle die from the ingery? Also Renee have u ever come across eny morphs on wild anacondas like blue or albino?
CrazyCody

yes the snake died, despite our efforts

no unusual morphs...such an animal wouldn't last long in the wild, anyway, since they are predated so heavily as young, and any unusual color would make them more obvious to predators

However, in just the one area I lived in Venezuela, there is a white, non-albino morph of the white-tailed deer that hang out, and they are not too uncommon...

RO