Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is just an academic/hypothetical question:

If a hognose of the Heterodon genus thinks that a prey item is too large, will it not eat it? If Heterodons in general wouldn't care, what about isolated occurrences with individual Heterodons?

Thanks for any replies to this - and again, just academic/hypothetical.

This is a bit easy, biology wise, under normal conditions any snake, hogs or otherwise is normally capable of swallowing and digesting a certain size prey item. I imagine they learn individually thru trial and error.

biologically, they have limits, behaviorally, there is a range of individual approaches. That is, each animal does have some degree of "individualism", this allows for survival in varying conditions and supporting conditions do change. All habitats have, ups and downs, wet years, dry years, years when prey is abundant, years when other types of prey are abundant and their main prey item is scarce, etc. All that is normal.

Lastly, like with many animals, prey size increases with levels of hunger. Well known in the world of falconry. Starving individuals, will attach and attempt to consume items much larger then normal.

The last lastly, individuals do make mistakes and pay dearly for them. Best wishes

I had an interesting experience along this line this year. Hatched out a big clutch of easterns from the offspring of a rehabbed female I worked with a few years back. I had found out previously that I could sometimes excite a hatchling eastern into eating a pink if I put a cricket frog in at the same time and then removed it. I thought it might work with a toad too, but don't often encounter toads here at the right times. Anyway, I did have some fairly big toads that I was using for scent. I was a little concerned that the toads were big enough to try to eat the hognose hatchlings, since they would eat nightcrawlers just as big (by the way I have had no luck getting baby easterns to eat nightcrawlers, but have heard that they occasonally do. Anyway, I put the smallest toad-about half grown, in with the hatcling hognose and scented pink. Came back and found that the hatchling had eaten the huge meal(only the toad). I have no idea how he would have held on and subdued it, even if the alleged "venom" was of some help. He digested it completely and did not regurgite. I always sort of wondered how baby easterns in all habitats could encounter enough baby toads to get started. Apparently the toads don't have to be so small.

Did he eat the pink too? Or just the frog?

Have you ever seen them take interest in worms at all?

Thanks for sharing.....cool story!

Normally across the board, keepers tend to no understand what neonates feed on. They do tend to feed on very large items, compared to adults.

And yes, in nature they can do silly things and fail. I have watched snakes attempt to swallow and fail with very large items. Once on my porch, I found a spotted night snake that swallowed a large gecko and died swallowing it.

Found a baby water snake with a hold on an adult leopard frogs leg. Had a three food water snake in captivity that attempted to eat my pet bull frog, the frog simply swatted the snake and that was it. A friend found a black racer doing the death roll, when he investigated, he found a short tailed snake had a hold of the racers head and was constricting it. Again in my yard, I scared a adult jack rabbit and it ran by a pallet of tile, an averaged sized gopher snake grabbed the rabbit and hung on. The rabbit was kicking and twisting and jumping. that snake was all twisted up. The snake let go and was fine. It looked like the snake would get itself snapped in half.

So yes, snakes can do silly things and sometimes they die or get injured doing them.

Back to captivity, the problem with neonates feeding on large prey items is easy to understand, In nature the snake can go to the temps and humidity it needs, in captivity, its either there or not, if not, neonates reguir large prey items. In most cases, keepers keep snakes in very average conditions, which means, they can only perform in an average way.

That's an interesting account. Thanks for sharing!
-----
Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

Once I had a group of chickens and as they will do, one of the hens nested on the ground in a corner of the chicken house. I saw
a Southern Hognose snake that had swallowed the hen's head and neck but was stopped there as the body was much too large for him. I shook his tail and he released himself from the hen and crawled away. The time of year was early spring and the temps were low 60s F at night, 70s day.

I once saw a snake try and eat itself! Looks like a Hognose to me. They will eat anything, ha! Crazy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIl2DSXUffw

i have had several of my hogs try to latch onto me when it's feeding time. i'm referring down all the way to hatchlings :-o i have a tiger striped female that is just now hitting the 50g mark. a couple weeks ago she has grabbed ahold of my fore arm. so, you have a hog with a 1/2" wide head trying to swallow a fore arm aprox 6" in dia. i got her off quickly and now watch out for her lunging out of the cage, but still....

when they are hungry, some of them don't seem to care how big it is

the chicken story was interesting. thanks for sharing!