Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Feel free to use any/all these pics for personal or education use. Step 1 in this sequence is the strike and envenomation.

Step 2- After the death of the prey item, usually within 1-3 minutes or so, the snake begins to devour its prey head first.

Step 3- Using its rows of movable teeth, the viper "walks" the prey into his mouth and towards his throat by working each side of his face independantly from eachother. First the left, then the right or vice versa. By moving in this manner it can soon get the prey into its throat where the muscles in its neck can take over. At this point ingesting the prey item becomes much faster.

Steps 1-3 took almost 30 minutes for the Viper to accomplish. But with the aid of the snakes muscular body, steps 4-8 took less than 10 minutes!

In this picture the viper inadvertantly gets a mouthful of cage floor substrate while in the process of swallowing its prey.

Here you can clearly see the substrate in the vipers mouth (later removed by spraying a light stream of water into the vipers mouth as it "reset" its jaw). You can also clearly see how elastic the vipers skin is easlily stretching to accomodate the prey which is approximately 3-4 times the diameter of the vipers neck. You can actually see through the vipers skin and make out the color and shape of the prey item. Had this been a colorful bird, I'm certain the specie of bird could be decyphered.

Those are great pic's. Thanks for putting them on this forum! Very Cool

np

A close up view of how cleary you are able to see through the vipers skin. Directly to the left of the white of the prey item, a dark patch can be seen. The dark patch is the vipers heart, which was slowly and rythmicly beating with a slow undulation right to left.

This is the final step in this sequence. The prey item has gone down about as far as it will go. Once digestion begins, the lump in the vipers belly will become less and less noticable as the days go by. This meal should last the viper 2 weeks to one month. But for now, with a full belly the viper will seek warmth to aid in the digestion of its meal.

n/p

np

I was really hoping of a close up "yawn" at the end...oh well : )

I was busy trying to squirt substrate out of her mouth everytime she yawned. Actually, the whole time she was trying to swallow the mouse i was trying to get a picture of one of her fangs extended out as she "walked" down the mouse. But it happens so fast, and with a digital camera there is a 2 second delay between the time you press the button and the time that the picture is taken. It is really kind of annoying. I was trying to take the picture before she did it in hopes of catching it at the right moment. I had about 20 wasted shots of that! I would get it either right before or right AFTER the fang was extended. Next time I feed her I will try my best to capture that shot. Glad you enjoyed the others though!

Very nice shots. Step 6 is a very unique picture. Well done

Al
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Al

You can take the animal out of the jungle but you can never take the jungle out of the animal.

np