Watch Giant Cobra Swallow Huge Viper in Horrifying Video - Newsweek
An enormous Indian cobra has been recorded slowly eating a five-foot Russell's viper, stretching open its jaws to consume the creature head first, and whole.
The Wildlife SOS-GSPCA team were called to Madhu Farm, in Kalali, India, where the six-foot Indian Cobra was videoed eating its gargantuan five-foot viper dinner after a fight between the two snakes.
The team carefully removed the cobra from the farmhouse and released it back into its natural environment.
Wildlife SOS is a non-profit charity that rescues and rehabilitates wildlife across India.
Snakes are one of the leading causes of death in India, with an average of 58,000 people dying from snake bites per year, and an estimated 1.2 million snakebite deaths occurring between 2000 and 2019.
Raj Bhavsar, Project Coordinator at Wildlife SOS and President of GSPCA, said in a statement: "The situation could have gone the other direction as well. In that case, the viper would have emerged victorious it would have swallowed the cobra! This is common behavior among snakes and usually, the bigger snake wins."
Both the snakes involved in this brutal fight are venomous. The Indian Cobra can grow to up to six and a half feet long, and generally preys upon mammals as an adult, and amphibians, small snakes and lizards when juvenile.
It can be found across India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and southern Nepal, as can the Russell's viper, which primarily feeds on rodents as adults.
Kartick Satyanarayan, CEO and Co-founder of Wildlife SOS, said in a statement: "The Indian Cobra and Russell's viper are two of India's 'big four' venomous snake species and their bite can be fatal. Our team is thoroughly trained in carrying out such rescue operations with the utmost caution while not interfering with the natural behavior of a snake."
The cobra in this video can be seen utilizing a very special feature that snakes possess that allows them to swallow prey much bigger than their heads, like a big rodent or, in this case, another enormous snake.
The lower mandible bones of a snake's jaw are not connected the way they are in other animals like humans.
Instead, they are attached by a flexible ligament, allowing the mandibles to move apart laterally and hugely increase the width of the mouth to much wider than the snake's body. This allows them to swallow massive prey, which then lets them go for up to several months without another meal.
Snakes slowly swallow large prey like this huge Russell's viper by moving each mandible independently and moving their heads forward in a side-to-side motion over the prey's body, shuffling the prey into the throat inch by inch.
They don't chew their prey on the way down, so all digestion is chemical, aided by the injections of venom by the snake's fangs.
However, digestion is very slow, which risks the prey putrefying inside them, releasing gas and expanding inside the snake's body.
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