Burmese pythons are large in size, growing up to 16 feet. However, their sheer size alone cannot explain their stunning gape, the amount this animal species can open its mouth, necessitated ingesting prey as large as alligators.

New research details how Burmese pythons or Python molorous bivittatus have evolved an extraordinary feature that enables their jaws to stretch wide enough to eat and swallow prey up to six times bigger than "some similarly-sized snakes that can eat," a ScienceAlert report, specified.

 

However, in Florida, where these snakes have been introduced, the Burmese pythons are decimating native species and damaging ecosystems by eating nearly everything in sight.

According to environmental scientist Ian Bartoszek, from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, the Everglades Ecosystem is changing in real-time based on a single species.

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Burmese Python
(Photo : Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission non-native Wildlife Technician, holds a Burmese Python.

Extremely Mobile Jaws

In this new study published in the Integrative Organismal Biology journal, Bartoszek and three other researchers took a closer look at the biology of this gigantic snake, particularly its ability to eat virtually any creature it encounters.

To help their already-huge mouths open even wider, the research showed that Burmese pythons evolved a special feature and that's "super-stretchy skin" between their lower jaws that enable them to gobble down animals even larger than what their extremely mobile jaws alone would allow.

Since snakes are inclined to swallow their prey whole, minus chewing it first, their gape is a key factor when it comes to determining what they can eat.

Unlike humans' lower jaws, as well as other mammals, the snakes' lower jawbones are not fused but only loosely connected with an elastic ligament, enabling their mouths to open wider.

'Super-Stretchy' Skin

Yet, Bruce Jayne, the study co-author and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cincinnati, explained that expandable jaws may be a regular thing for snakes. The super-stretchy skin of the lower jaws of the Burmese pythons goes to a new elasticity level.

To find out how the snakes' gape compared to their body size, Janye, together with his colleagues, also investigated the wild-caught and captive brown snakes' gape along with that of Burmese pythons.

These similar snakes, which are mildly hostile, hunt birds as well as other tiny prey in forest canopies. By measuring snakes and their potential prey, the study authors could estimate the guest animals the snakes could eat, together with the relative benefits of eating different choices of prey, ranging from rats and rabbits to alligators and white-tailed deer.

The data suggested that smaller snakes have more to gain from an enlarged size of their gape that allows them to eat somewhat large prey. 

Cascading Impacts of Burmese Pythons

A similar Science News report said that past studies have shown that constrictors like Burmese pythons are killing their prey not by suffocating it but by cutting off the blood flow of the helpless animals.

While the new study is more about understanding a particular biological curiosity compared to finding out how to control an invasive species, it could at least help researchers anticipate the cascading impacts of Burmese pythons on wetland ecosystems.

It is not going to help to control the snakes, Jayne said. However, he continued, it can help with the understanding of the impact of invasive species.

If one knows how big the snakes are getting and how long it takes for them to get that size, he can place a rough upper limit on what resources the snake could be expected to use.

Related information about python eating an alligator is shown on  Ben Sojo's YouTube video below:

 

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