if you slip a rat's face and hide, Hannibal Lecter–style, over the snout of a non-favored prey item, a python will try to swallow it. {University of Alabama snake digestion expert Stephen Secor did this some years back to reenact a scene for National Geographic television. "Worked like a charm," he told me. "I can get a python to eat a beer bottle if I put a rat head on it."} For
In "Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal," Mary Roach explores the fascinating world of digestion, highlighting the intriguing behaviors of various animals. One notable experiment by Stephen Secor, a snake digestion expert from the University of Alabama, illustrates how a python can be tricked into swallowing an object by disguising it. By covering an inedible item, like a beer bottle, with a rat's face, Secor demonstrated that pythons will attempt to...
