For many years now, it was common knowledge that such snakes as the Boa constrictor utilize suffocation for killing their prey.
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A team researchers have just challenged a long-standing belief by showing that boa constrictors kill their prey by cutting off blood supply rather than through suffocation. The squeeze-happy snake cuts off its victim’s blood flow, not air supply.
“What Hardy saw was the speed at which the animals were dying… they were dying way too quickly for it to be suffocation”. He supposed an animal’s death was caused by circulatory or cardiac arrest, says Boback, but there were no studies to back him up.
While it’s obvious that boa constrictors wrap around their prey, they are not stopping the prey from breathing like previously thought.
The snakes save energy by easing off the pressure of their coils the second they sensed their victim’s heart stopped beating.
Last but not least, the field experts also implanted the rats with pressure probes and collected blood samples before giving the rodents anesthetics and throwing them to the boa snakes in order to see how their bodies respond to constrictions.
The evidence showed that victims squeezed by boas, massive nonvenomous snakes native to Central and South America, quickly lost their ability to pump blood. For the mice for instance, the scientists have revealed that it only took about the level of pressure needed to stop the local blood flow of a human arm.
He explained: ‘It was not something we took lightly and we wanted to make sure the animals [rats] did not experience pain or suffer.’.
‘I remember being in the room and the students were looking at the data in disbelief that it happened that fast.
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Study’s lead researcher Prof Scott Boback, from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, said that from the research they came to know that the snakes use very efficient and rapid way to end the life of its prey than expected. “By understanding the mechanisms of how constriction kills, we gain a greater appreciation for the efficiency of this behavior and the benefit it provided early snakes”.
