What does the snake eat?
The Anaconda’s thick body can measure at its waistline more than 13 inches in diameterunless it has just fed and is nicely bloated. The snake enjoys plump rodents, chewy alligators, crunchy jungle birds and frogs. A young deer is no challenge. The snake also can climb a tree near the mouth of a dark cave and snatch bats from the air as they fly by its elevated perch. A similar technique is used to catch other birds on the wing. How does it swallow big prey? The Anaconda prefers to hunt at night. It coils its body around its hapless meal and gives its prey a suffocating squeeze by tightening the powerful muscles that comprise a series of concentric rings along its body. Then, the snake unhinges its jaw, opens wide its mouth and swallows whole the newly deceased prey. That’s when this humongous snake’s waistline shows dramatic changes. One can easily see the bulge of its most recently devoured meal, especially if that meal is a 100-pound animal with lots of bulk such as a wild pig or a c
