![]() ![]() They were able to smell the prey without visual cues or vibration. With the carcass lures, the chemical cues were enough to attract the snakes. The snakes used cues from both types of prey. They found out that the snakes were equally satisfied by both dead and live mice. In this study, the researchers used both dead and live mice as baits. There is one scientific study that focused its attention to brown tree snakes to determine scavenging behavior. They seem to like the thrill of the kill.īut science suggest snakes do like carrion meat (dead meat), so long as they can correctly identify it as prey. Many snake owners will attest to the fact that some snakes will refuse to eat a frozen rodent. Why Do Some Snakes Only Like Live Rodents? They rely on their senses to hunt, and they will use these senses to find food. They just do not use scavenging as their primary method for hunting food. This is not to say that they will not eat carron. Pythons and boas, on the other hand, have powerful muscles that asphyxiate their prey. They have a keen sense of smell, and some species even have a night vision or heat sensors. Snakes evolved as they now are because of the need to hunt for food. If snakes would rely on carrion to survive, other animals would outsmart them. ![]() Snakes will typically fly in fear rather than approach another animal to fight for food.īecause snakes are solitary and afraid of becoming prey, they prefer to hunt live animals. They are fast and agile but competing against other animals for food is not something snakes will actively do. Snakes also do not like confrontation with other animals.Īlthough snakes are powerful, they have no limbs that would help them run. When animals die, there is usually a larger carnivore that finds it and eats it, so snakes rarely find recently dead food.Īs such, snakes have to forage and hunt for food. Why is it that Most Snakes are not Scavengers? Some pythons also eat butchered feral hogs. There are many studies showing that snakes scavenge for fish, frogs, snakes, and birds. Scavenging is an important aspect of an ecosystem. In the wild, scientists noted that dead animals are scavenged rather than left alone for decomposition. There are more than 55 genera of cobras and 360 species. Elapidae – the elapids are venomous snakes that include the black mamba and the king cobra.Boidae – these are boas and pythons these snakes are non-venomous, and they include the green anaconda, the Timor python, African rock python, and many others.Many people consider this family as a sub-family of the Coubridae. Acrochordidae – these are aquatic snakes typically found in the eastern coast of Asia.Viperidae – snakes in this family are the vipers such as the cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, copperheads, green vipers, etc.Colubridae – these snakes include the Green Tree, Brown Tree, Freshwater, and garter snakes.Here are the families of snakes that are known to scavenge: They typically look for carcasses of rodents, fish, frogs, and other snakes. In the wild, there are studies showing that pit vipers and other piscivorous snakes scavenge. Live feeding is generally discouraged as the snakes can get wounds from the prey’s bites. ![]() Live animals also carry parasites and bacteria, which can harm the snake. Owners do not want to feed live animals to the snakes for fear of the snakes getting hurt. They are in a cage and the only option they have is to eat thawed mice or rats. In captivity, many snakes are scavengers because they have no choice. Snakes would only eat a carron if the environment is safe and it is hungry. While scavenging is part of their activities, they hunt and forage as well.Ī true scavenger is an animal that eats nothing but carrion (dead meat), like the Turkey vulture. Generally, snake is not a true scavenger. Active hunting is a process by which a snake feels vibrations on the ground for movement, and then the snake follows that vibration.Ĭoupled with its sense of smell and heat vision, the snake comes close and strikes the prey. Hunting occurs when snakes stalk and pounce on living creatures so they can eat them.They have large mouths that can swallow these eggs, and then crack them once the eggs are in their stomachs. What these snakes do is to rely on their sense of smell to hunt for eggs. For example, there are snakes that eat eggs such as the Dasypeltinae snake from the family Colubridae. Foraging is a method by which a snake still hunts for food, albeit the food is not something that it must kill.One should not mistake scavenging with foraging. Any animal that does not hunt or kill its food is a scavenger. Instead, it looks for dead animals and eat them. A scavenging snake is one that does not kill its food. Scavenging is the process of finding food that is ready and available to eat.To understand scavenging, we need to differentiate scavenging from foraging and hunting. ![]()
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