This python’s jaw has a stretchy secret to gape impressively wide
The invasive Burmese pythons slithering through the Florida Everglades eat almost anything they can get their jaws around—and that’s a lot. As their numbers have risen, small mammal populations have plummeted. But larger animals aren’t safe either; people have spotted these pythons swallowing alligators and white-tailed deer whole.
Most snakes cannot take bites and must engulf their prey whole. To do so, a typical snake opens the joint in the middle of its jaw, and the two halves flare out to the sides; the skin and muscle in between stretch to accommodate the food. The skin eventually snaps back, but “after they swallow a very big meal, [their chins] are baggy for a while,” says University of Cincinnati vertebrate morphologist Bruce Jayne.
The experiment showed just how wide each species’ mouth could get. The secret to the Burmese pythons’ superior skill? Extra stretch in the tissues between their jaw bones. Some 43 percent of their gap width capacity could be attributed to this tissue, compared with the tree snakes’ 17 percent.
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