Caitlin is spot-on about the diversity of eating habits shown by snakes when tackling prey. One of mine (a 4 year old rat snake) is the weirdest one I've ever seen: she's been fed nothing but pre-killed rodents, but she violently grabs them & rolls many times all around her tank with it before slowing down to eat. Her whole body is involved, but not really constricting the prey so much- instead she loosely coils her whole body & rolls around on her coils while holding the mouse- it's pretty hilarious, actually. In doing so, she travels quite a bit, over anything in her path. I've always wondered if she gets bruised under her scales & is sore the next day? She's finally learning to accept prey from my tongs with less drama, but sometimes she still reverts to rolling them to death. I have to wonder if she read & misunderstood the old legend about "hoop snakes"-
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