Zoologists from the University of Cincinnati (USA) have found that the African egg snake Dasypeltis gansi can swallow prey four to five times its mass. Research results published in the Journal of Zoology.
Dasypeltis gansi is an African egg snake. The total length of the representatives of this genus ranges from 80 cm to 1 m. This snake can swallow the whole egg without breaking the shell.
The head of this snake is small, its teeth are greatly reduced, and the bones of the skull are extremely mobile, which makes it possible to open the mouth very wide and swallow large prey. The authors studied the structure of the snake’s skull and found that it could open its mouth three to four times wider than other similar snakes.
According to the authors, this ability emerged in the process of adapting to life. The snake had to adapt to the spherical food. There was no need to develop such a mouth for snakes that ate longer animals.
Former Swiss scientists they were able to deprive snake scales using genome editing.