The process of becoming a snake's meal is slow and painful.
For members of the animal kingdom, you are either predator or prey. In many instances, the lines blur any clear-cut distinctions between the two. In some cases, predators can end up on the food chain just as quickly. Especially when it comes to some of the largest snakes in the world. They are not picky about what they eat, so long as they can subdue and swallow it.
In today's video, an animal you would not expect on the menu, a crocodile, finds itself in the clutches of a python.
As ferocious and as cranky as crocodiles are, this one stands no chance against the snake. The python strangles the croc just enough to subdue it and then proceeds to swallow the crocodile whole. While it is still alive and thrashing!
When it comes to horrible ways to die in nature, we imagine being slowly suffocated and swallowed whole ranks up there as one of the more terrifying ways to go. Fortunately, cases of pythons and other large snakes feeding upon people are rare and usually reserved for cheesy horror movies.
In those movies, the snakes always seem to swallow up their prey in seconds. This video shows it is a long, slow process for the snake to wolf down that crocodile. After a meal like this, it is likely it will take weeks at a minimum for it to digest the crocodile.
This may have been a smaller, juvenile crocodile, but it is still an impressive feat for any snake. Even if the crocodile was only a couple feet long, that is still an extremely large meal to swallow whole. Based on the people near the end of the video, it looks like the snake was at least 10 feet long. That is a big reptile no matter where you are from in the world!
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
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