The 2.5-year-old white-year-old deer and 28 kg was minimally digested, even after spending about 10 days inside the snake.
The difficulty in digesting large meals can limit the places where temperature -sensitive snakes can live – and this can be a good thing for us humans in places where these animals are invasive.
One Burmese Pitão of the Big Cypress National Reserve in Florida, vomited an entire white-white deer After the temperatures in southern Florida fall “the pike”, below what is supported by these animals.
Although it is known that pitões vomit their meals in cold laboratory environments, scientists had never observed these dodge snakes to do so in nature. The unusual observation, made in late November 2024, is described in a study now in Ecology and Evolution.
»Mark Sandfoss, senior author of the study and biologist of the United States Geological Service (USGs), to Live Science. «
“Pythons are constantly doing things I never imagined . Almost every day is a surprise, ”he praised, to, Mark Sandfossstudy leader and biologist of the United States Geological Service (USGS).
Burmese pythons (python bivittatus) have been an invasive species in Florida since the late 1970s.
As Live Science writes, despite this presence for decades, they are little studied and there are gaps in knowledge about the biology of snakes and how they interact with native species, such as deer.
The number of deer is decreasing in the reserve, which is worrying, since they constitute an important part of the diet of local predators, such as the panthers of Florida (Puma Concolor Coryi).
In November last year, Zap reported a bizarre case of a python, also in Florida.
To learn more about how often the snakes eat deer and the speed with which they digest them, reserve scientists spent a year accompanying the digestion of several large female pitões – those considered more likely to eat a deer.
Cold did not let the deer digest
But there was a snake that caught the most attention: there was a big lump in the stomach, indicating that he had eaten something the size of a deer. In the following days, however, This lump seemed not to diminish.
After a cold night, when temperatures fell to 9.4 ° C in the reserve, the scientists met the snake and found it swimming in a swamp of willowers near a swamp Mully digested white-white deer (ODOCOILEUS VIRGINIANUS.
As the snakes are cold blood, or ectothermichave difficulty working in the cold. Its biological processes, including digestion, are slower until temperature will warm again.
If there is an accumulation of bacteria, the snake response is to vomit to eliminate bacteria. This can be an activity that consumes a lot of energy for a snake already hungry, but unexpectedly this snake survived.
