Durban - An African rock python has bitten off more than it could safely swallow – perishing at the weekend with its innards punctured by dozens of needle-sharp quills from the 13.8kg porcupine it ate several days earlier.
The python was in the news last week when a mountain biker photographed the bloated 3.9m snake lying next to a cycle track at Lake Eland Game Reserve near Port Shepstone.
This weekend, however, reserve managers found the python dead beneath a rocky ledge where it had been trying to digest its meal.
General manager Jennifer Fuller said the exact reasons for the snake’s death were not clear, thought it was apparent that several porcupine quills were lodged inside the digestive tract.
“It had fallen off the rocky ledge. We don’t know if it died beforehand, or whether the fall drove some of the quills into its digestive tract.”
Snake expert Johan Marais said pythons were known to eat porcupines and other animals with sharp horns.
Marais, the author of A Complete Guide To Snakes Of Southern Africa, said: “In cases where they are disturbed by people after a big meal they usually regurgitate their meal as they move with difficulty – and regurgitating a porcupine is obviously problematic with the sharp quills.
“So my guess is that the human disturbance caused the snake to try and regurgitate its meal and that caused its death.”
Nevertheless, there have been several reports around the world of pythons dying from similar injuries.
Three years ago, staff at a nature reserve near Lamu in Kenya came across a dead 3.6m python killed by the quills of a porcupine.
The US Geological Service reported two cases of boa constrictors that died after eating porcupines, and Brazilian snake researcher Marcelo Duarte published a study in 2003 suggesting porcupines killed by pythons, boa constrictors and other snakes had been unable to display the visual warning signals that often deterred potential predators.
Whereas some predators will be warned off by the visual threat displays of a porcupine, many snake species rely on thermal or chemical sensory mechanisms to ambush prey at night. He recorded several cases of snakes being discovered with quills protruding from their heads, stomachs and other parts of the body – although pythons often preyed on animals with sharp horns that could cause similar injuries or death.
American physiologist Stephen Secor, who conducted X-ray experiments on snake digestion systems in a laboratory, found that pythons digested their prey head-first using very strong stomach acids.
Two days after swallowing a rat, x-rays showed the skull had been digested completely, although its body was still intact.
After four days, the rat’s legs and chest bones had disappeared and after six days, only a hind leg or occasional vertebra remained.
Tony Carnie, The Mercury