How Snakes Hunt: It Isn’t Suffocation
A guide on what happens to their prey, removing myths, and understanding humane pet feeding with a slight jaunt through criminal justice and sneezes.
A Small Warning Before We Begin
Before we get too far it’s worth warning readers that we’re going to be talking about some particularly morbid items. The goal is not to be graphic or promote any sort of gory details but we will be talking about actions that could be unsettling.
A Bloody Eye
One such event would be years ago. For at least a week, any time I walked out into the public people would back away. Small children would be alarmed. Some children would ask questions while others would immediately look away. There wasn’t much I could do: I had suffered a subconjunctival hemorrhage. You can read more about the causes of it and see a somewhat disturbing picture courtesy of the Mayo Clinic at the link provided.
A subconjunctival hemorrhage happens when blood vessels burst inside of the eye. It can be quite alarming to see someone with one as blood pools under the clear portion of their eye as a result of a blood vessel breaking. In my case, while pretty boring, I had held my nose while I sneezed: I haven’t done it since. A week of odd looks was enough.
Since that event I’ve seen other people with it. During a demonstration at a local fitness center I watched two men practicing what looked like Brazilian jiu-jitsu or a similar fighting art. They were practicing escaping from a rear choke hold. The one attempting the escapes appeared to get more and more frustrated as they practiced over and over until finally tapping out and saying his vision was blurry: he had suffered a subconjunctival hemorrhage.
In both instances, when I sneezed and when the martial arts practitioner suddenly gained a case of blurred vision, the pressure in our head caused blood vessels to break and injury to occur. A sneeze is very forceful and stopping that force can cause some harm with people sometimes suffering from ringing ears, headaches, and eye aches afterwards. If you recall the defacto wrestling choke hold the one being held usually has their wind pipe in the elbow of the attacker. Pressure is placed on both sides of the neck, building pressure and interfering with the blood flow through the carotid arteries, until they pass out or escape. Neither of these actions cause any sort of strangulation or prevention of air passing normally.
So what does this have to do with snakes who we hear “strangle” their prey?
Their prey suffers ischemia.
Constrictors
Snakes that do not subdue prey with a venom are generally considered constrictors — a term that often changes meaning depending on who is using it. For our examples we’re going to stick with rat snakes, corn snakes, boas, and pythons.
When these snakes locate a prey item they first strike it, affixing their teeth into it, and then coil around it. This is where the idea that they’re “suffocating” their prey comes from — but they’re not. Instead they are squeezing tight enough to interfere with blood flow in the animal. This may sound similar to suffocating since the prey cannot get oxygen to their body, and in few cases cannot get air into their lungs, but it is significantly different.
The pressure in the body of the prey item can cause blood vessels to burst, much like my sneeze and the wrestlers in the beginning of the article, a mechanism that is extremely destructive to small blood vessels inside of organs. These organs become engorged with blood at abnormally high pressures causing ruptures and malfunctions in the liver, kidneys, and brain. This is significantly different than suffering solely because of a lack of oxygen.
In some instances, pet owners may observe these snakes not constricting at all. Pythons like the woma python (Aspidites Ramsayi) use their bodies to crush prey into the walls of burrows or into the ground itself. Some popular pets like ball pythons may crush their prey against the floor of their enclosures in a similar manner — without ever having struck it.
Whether constricting or using their bodies to crush the prey against the ground or walls in the area, the result is the same: blood is forced at high pressures into areas of the body where blood vessels may burst, oxygen rich blood cannot be transported in, carbon dioxide cannot be transported out, and significant damage results in the organs all while the prey is still able to breath.
A Human History of Causing Ischemia
Watching movies or documentaries will present you with an object of fear: the hangman’s noose. This special device is a recognizable knot placed over the victims head where they are then suspended from the rope. The knot is special in that it does not tighten. The position of the knot significantly alters the outcome.
Historically, during an execution, the knot was chosen to be placed to the side. When the platform dropped from under the victim the sudden jarring action would separate their cervical spine. Death would be instant.
When it comes to pet snakes and their prey this would be equivalent to what is known as elongation. Elongation is the act of a keeper performing cervical dislocation on a prey item to avoid the prey item suffering being killed by the other animal.
An alternative to the hangman’s noose having the knot to the side was to have the knot to the rear. In this method the goal was to torture the victim: the drop would not cause cervical dislocation. Instead the victim would suffer blood being forced into their head with no method of escaping. Depending on the crime, this may be repeated over and over. Breathing would often be possible, but the damage and torture of repeatedly forcing blood into the head would be horrific.
In popular culture and history, Guy Fawkes is known to have escaped this torture. The inspiration for Anonymous masks, the film V for Vendetta, and the rhyme about the 5th of November managed to jump from the platform before he could be tortured by hanging.
Similar to the rear-facing hangman’s knot there was also a medieval torture method known as pressing or being pressed to death where a person would be placed between two boards and rocks would be stacked on top. Once again, blood would be trapped and forced into blood vessels that would rupture and damage organs. The victim could, most likely, continue breathing but would die of the injuries caused by ischemia.
Sourcing Humane Prey for Your Pets
While the previous section is a little morbid it should illustrate the difference between suffocation and ischemia. In one instance in history we have a person who chose cervical dislocation rather than suffering either.
This can all factor in to how you source food for your pets. It is also worth noting that this isn’t just for snakes — food in the form of prey items needs to be sourced for most pets, many people who choose a meat eating lifestyle, and various needs of animal sourced materials.
The humane decision comes in when choosing whether or not to use live prey items for your animal. There isn’t much benefit to requiring an animal to suffer death through a method we have long used for torture — significantly more humane methods are most likely available.
I encourage you, when possible, to use frozen and thawed prey items with your pets. There are many vendors offering a variety of items already frozen or, if you raise your own animals, methods you can use to humanely euthanize those animals before feeding them to snakes.
