Reptiles, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 27, 2022

Watch a python swallow an impala whole in this jaw-dropping video

An incredible video shows an African rock python (Python sebae), one of the largest snake species on the planet, slowly swallowing an impala whole. The video, recorded in MalaMala Game Reserve in South Africa, shows the snake's head slowly slinking across the impala's body as the snake seems to magically...

Feb 15, 2022

Rat snake facts

Rat snakes are medium-to-large, nonvenomous snakes that kill by constriction. They pose no threat to humans, and as their name implies, rats are one of their favorite foods. There are Old World (Eastern Hemisphere) and New World (Western Hemisphere) rat snakes, and the two types are genetically different. New World...

Feb 26, 2022

How do snakes hiss if they don't have front teeth?

Dogs say woof, cats say meow and snakes say sss. To make this sound, humans have to position their tongues against their front teeth. Snakes don't have front teeth, so how can they make this sound — and sometimes even stick out their tongues at the same time? It turns...

Mar 1, 2022

Brown snakes: Facts, characteristics, habitat and diet

The name brown snake refers to two different genera of snakes, found on two different continents. If you are in North America, brown snake is the common name for Storeria, a small, shy, nonvenomous snake. If you are in Australia, Papua New Guinea or West Papua, brown snake is the...

Mar 3, 2022

Anaconda: Habits, hunting and diet

Anacondas are semi aquatic snakes found in tropical South America, notable in the Amazon and different to pythons. They are some of the largest snakes in the world and are known for their swimming ability. “Anaconda” is the common name for the genus Eunectes, a genus of boa. Eunectes means...

Mar 22, 2022

Surprise! King cobra is actually a royal lineage of 4 species

The imposing king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), instantly recognizable by its flaring hood, is the world's biggest venomous snake and can grow to reach nearly 13 feet (4 meters) long. It inhabits a sizable kingdom across the Asian tropics, stretching from Indonesia to India. However, new research reveals that the king...

Mar 24, 2022

How do boa constrictors avoid suffocating when they squeeze their prey?

Boa constrictors famously hunt by ambushing their prey and then squeezing the captured animals to death with their muscular coils. But as a boa constricts its body around a victim and cuts off blood flow to that animal's brain, how does the snake avoid squeezing all the air from its...

Jun 21, 2022

Largest python ever found in Florida is 18 feet long and weighs a whopping 200 pounds

The largest Burmese python ever seen in Florida has been discovered, lured out of its hiding place in the Everglades by researchers who used another python as bait, National Geographic reported. The gargantuan snake was a female, measuring nearly 18 feet (5.4 meters) long and weighing 215 pounds (97 kilograms)...

Jun 24, 2022

Snake caught eating even bigger snake in striking new video

A daring snake with a big appetite was recently caught in the act of chowing down on an even larger snake. Video footage showed the ravenous reptile as it swallowed a venomous relative headfirst in a mighty gulp. The unusual sight was filmed in Haddock, Georgia by 82-year-old Tom Slagle,...

Jul 15, 2022

19 python babies and their massive mom nabbed in Florida nursery raid

Under the cover of darkness, two wildlife officials raided an invasive python's nest in a South Florida swamp and successfully wrestled 19 wriggling hatchlings and their mother into a bag and out of the protected habitat. The next day, one of the officials captured a second breeding female — measuring...

Jul 31, 2022

Copperhead snakes: Facts, bites & babies

Copperhead snakes are some of the more commonly seen North American snakes. They're also the most likely to bite, although their venom is relatively mild, and their bites are rarely fatal for humans. These snakes get their name, fittingly, from their copper-red heads, according to the biology department at Pennsylvania...

Sep 8, 2022

Rare Florida snake found dead after choking on a giant centipede

The rim rock crowned snake (Tantilla oolitica) is the rarest snake in North America, and scientists hadn't glimpsed one in the wild in more than four years. But when one of the elusive snakes recently turned up in a state park in Florida, the sighting wasn't a happy one —...

Oct 5, 2022

Jaw-dropping study reveals how pythons can devour super-size prey

Burmese pythons are voracious eaters, swallowing nearly anything that crosses their paths — even sizable white-tailed deer and other large mammals. So is there a limit to how far these slithery carnivores can stretch their jaws to snarf down big prey? Maybe not, scientists recently learned. These pythons are massive...

Oct 14, 2022

Snakes on Planes? Serpents Accelerate Faster Than Fighter Pilots

Snakes can strike faster than the blink of an eye and can reach cheek-jiggling accelerations that would cause a fighter pilot to black out, new high-speed video reveals. The high-speed footage also contradicts the commonly held assumption that venomous vipers were the fastest striking serpents. Instead, ordinary, nonvenomous constrictors such...

Nov 2, 2022

Missing woman’s body discovered in the stomach of 22-foot-long python in Indonesia

The body of a woman in Indonesia was recently discovered in the stomach of a massive, 22-foot-long (6.7 meters) python, which had killed and swallowed its victim whole. The woman, a 54-year-old grandmother named Jahrah, went missing in Jambi province on the island of Sumatra on Oct. 23, according to...