With the snakes anesthetized, the team implanted metal markers no bigger than half a millimeter in the ribs and vertebrae they wanted to image.
To test these hypotheses, the research group visualized a boa constrictor’s rib cage during constriction using 3-D X-ray technology. But another option would be that they use any uncompressed area of their rib cage to draw air into their lungs. Brainerd said.īased on previous observations in the field, scientists had theorized that, when constricting and ingesting prey, snakes are most likely changing the specific region of their rib cage that’s expanding.
“Something had to happen with the evolution of their lung ventilation system in order for them to become these elongated, small-headed animals that eat big meals,” Dr. Exactly how boas could breathe while constricting or ingesting remained a mystery. Ingesting prey also expands ribs to their limit. While they’re squeezing, those ribs are compressed. Their findings shed light on the anatomy of snakes and how these slithering predators have come to thrive in so many parts of the world. Their work was published on Thursday in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Brainerd and her colleagues set out to understand how boa constrictors breathe under such cramped conditions and discovered that they’re able to precisely shift the region of their rib cage that expands to draw air into their lungs. “And that takes quite a bit of energy, so they have to be breathing.”ĭr. “They do this for 10, 15, up to 45 minutes,” said Elizabeth Brainerd, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University. Some of their larger relatives, anacondas, can eat capybara and deer, and there have been some instances of pythons eating people.īut constricting and ingesting prey is no small - or quick - feat. To kill its prey, a boa will coil around it, squeezing hard enough to stop the prey’s blood from flowing, and then, stretching its jaws open, devour it whole.
The boa constrictor got its name for a reason.
0 kommentar(er)
