I've become really fascintated with how snake's "work" especially in digestion...here's some things that just blew me away recently....

- snakes that are ambush (aka "sit and wait") type predators like ball pythons have the ability to increase their blood flow volume up to 150-200% in the days immediately following a feed

- this increased blood flow volume goes directly to their intestines, liver, etc. to deal with digestion (which explains the temporarily enlarged heart after feeding)

- if the prey is extraordinarily large they can "waste" up to 32% of it's available caloric energy due to the above...so therefore....smaller, more frequent aka weekly meals are best for our snakes and small is better than large! (yay Adam!)

- if fed irregularily or fasting, the snake will react by shutting down it's small intestine and other high energy drawing organs

- when first fed after this time, there is a physical need to basically quickly restart it's organs causing a huge strain on the snake and wasting valuable calories....therefore especially after a fast a snake should be offered smaller than normal meals to allow it's digestive process to rebuild more slowly (always made sense to me but now I know why)

Pretty obvious as well why we should be leaving these snakes alone for that critical 48 hours or so after a feeding, isn't it.