Eating a pinkie

I had a disturbing experience when feeding my Sinaloan yesterday. It is still eating only live pinkies (I would like to change it to F/T so I dont have to go weekly). I put the pinkie in there (and it was a big one!). He grabbed it from the bag and started to swallow it live. The poor pinkie lived until the snake got to its head (about ten minutes). I wanted to kill the pinkie to get it over with but this snake has such a bad eating history that I didnt want to risk it not eating again for a while by interrupting the process. Has anyone seen this before? It was really horrible and it is going to need to learn to eat F/T like the rest of my snakes.

Jamie

Wow, thats pretty scary :shock:

Ive never heard of a snake doing that before, Ive seen leopard geckos doing that but never a snake.

How old is your snake ? What kind of food was it raised on ? (dead? live?).Maybe it was raised on F/T and didnt constrict to kill it..........but even then, wouldent natural instincs kick in ???

Thats really wierd.

My Sinaloan eats F/T but he never constricts the prey and justs starts eating it as soon as I put it in his cage. I have also seen both Black Racers and Coachwhips do this very same thing. They will usually grab the mouse or rat and then shake it a few times maybe to stun it and the begin eating it alive. I guess it is a normal thing with them. My other snakes constrict the F/T prey before eating it expect of course for mt Canebrake and Copperhead.

My corn doesnt bother to constrict, shes been eating F/T pinkies outta the egg.

Roxy and Rebel on the other hand, they consrict.When i fed Rebel a few days ago she constricted for about 10 minutes.........a damn long time.Roxy only constricts for about two minutes (i time her)

We feed live at work and I was feeding a Taiwan beauty a small rat and she grabbed it by the head and didn't wrap it. Swallowed it alive. Weirdest thing that happened at work.