![]() They use a variety of methods and tricks to make hunting prey easier for them, such as injecting deadly venom or slowly constricting their prey until the animals start to suffocate and are rendered unconscious. Snakes are unbelievably fierce predators for having no legs to run with or limbs to grasp with! How Do Snakes Hunt Their Prey? A snake eating. Various mammal, bird, and reptile species’ eggsĪmazingly, larger species of snakes like anacondas and pythons will eat larger animals, like monkeys, deer, and capybaras! There are a few recorded instances of anacondas attacking animals like jaguars and lions, though this is very rare and usually out of desperation, such as if they’re starving or sick.Other snakes, especially babies and juveniles.Invertebrates like earthworms and slugs.Various other rodents like rabbits and chipmunks.In reality, snakes eat lots of small-to-medium-sized prey animals, such as: This means you don’t have to worry about snakes eating humans, as we’re just too much trouble for them to bother with. They won’t go after anything that’s already dead and decomposing, though in some cases, they will eat eggs from various animals like birds, fish, and even other snakes and reptiles since eggs are packed with the protein and nutrients they need and are easy targets for them.Īdditionally, most species of snakes are fairly small, around 2 to 4 feet in length, so they prefer to pursue prey animals that they can reliably swallow whole without complications. ![]() In general, snakes prefer live prey, since they get far more nutrients out of live animals than dead ones. So, what foods do snakes eat, then, if plants are off-limits? The answer is lots and lots of protein-rich prey animals (and sometimes their eggs, too)! What Snakes Eat: 10+ Foods On Their Menu A king cobra striking at prey Without the necessary gut bacteria to break down plants or any way to get enough calories out of them, snakes just don’t find plant material worth eating. A snake’s digestive tract is suited to eating very dense, high-calorie foods like small prey animals, and most snakes only eat once every few weeks or so as their meals slowly break down in their stomachs. Plus, plants just don’t have enough calories to sustain them, even if they were able to digest them properly. This is mostly due to these animals’ very short digestive tracts and the fact that they tend to swallow their prey whole without chewing even once. ![]() Snakes’ bodies simply aren’t designed to derive nutrients from or digest plants. There aren’t even any omnivorous snakes that occasionally eat plants. ![]() To this day, scientists and researchers haven’t been able to find even a single species of snake that eats plants in any amount. This means they never eat plant material like leaves or vegetables. As we briefly touched on earlier, all species of snakes are 100% carnivorous. ![]()
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