Teeth in the throat

In Africa there is a type of egg-eating snake called Dasypeltis scabra . These snakes move very quickly, including on gravel surfaces between trees.

This snake has a small, narrow head. My body is slender, about 0.8m long. Eyes have flat pupils in the vertical position. Scales on small sides but with edges. The tail is quite short. The back is gray, brown-gray, or blue-brown. There are dark spots between the back and the black spots on the side. On the top of the head are two V-shaped streaks. A similar V-shaped trail is located just behind the neck.

Although they look so disgusting, they are completely harmless to humans.

The reason for this is the name "snake eating eggs" because they have a talent for eating eggs. They only eat one thing is the eggs of birds. Surely you will be surprised to see them grabbing eggs with a diameter of three times their head diameter. Although small, they can eat chicken eggs. Dasypeltis scabra snakes hunt eggs in the ground and on trees, mostly at night. Sometimes, however, people also see these snakes feeding all day.

Snakes eating eggs have extremely flexible mouths and jaws (jaws with joints in a way that can make the jaw significantly relax). When snakes swallow eggs (usually eggs nearly double their head size), snakes push eggs back into their mouths, gradually swallowing eggs into their jaws, by stretching elastic ligaments that connect the lower jaw . Because this snake has only a few small teeth on each jaw, it is not entangled when swallowing eggs. When the snake was trying to swallow the eggs, small scales on the neck stood up in rows to reveal the skin beneath.

Most other snakes usually eat only soft-shelled eggs (such as lizard eggs, snake eggs), because they do not have a ' specialized tool ' to break hard eggshell. But the egg-eating snake Dasypeltis scabra has special 'teeth' deep in the throat. The cervical vertebrae form serrated teeth, located in the esophagus, which are responsible for piercing eggshell. When the egg is swallowed down to the neck, the egg is pierced by special teeth. The egg is swallowed and the egg shell is released.

In the summer, the Dasypeltis scabra snake produces 6-25 eggs. But strangely, these snakes lay their eggs in each place, but rarely lay all their eggs in one nest.

During the season when the birds lay a lot, snakes try to eat a lot of eggs to store fat in them. They live on that fat during other seasons of the year - when only finding and eating less eggs.