Isn't that a Moreila kinghorni ?DavidBeard said:
I've always wondered about that, too. With smaller prey items, they don't always swallow head-first; I've had a few snakes that grabbed the tail end pretty often. With huge prey items, the snake likely finds the head eventually by simple necessity and trial-and-error, since getting it down from any other starting point might not be possible. Sometimes, though, there's more to it than that. The Spilotes I've hatched have only taken live prey at first and rarely constrict, so grabbing the head becomes more crucial. Often they'll just sit in a strike position and watch the mouse as it moves, only striking when it's oriented with its face toward the snake. Most of the time they're accurate enough to be able to cover the mouses face with the bite, suffocating it quickly. In this case, they seem to be determining where the head is visually. I doubt that comes into play much with dead prey. It might be a matter of the snake detecting the scent and moisture of the eyes, mouth and nasal passages, or as the Greek anatomist Galen said "heads don't smell like butts". He was a thousand years or so ahead of his time.evil_educator said: