Picture of a boa constrictor7/20/2023 ![]() Their hearts will beat even after they have stopped moving. With a metabolism that's already slow, lizards can survive hours of being squished. The researchers say the snake may have evolved this ability to sense its prey's heartbeat as a way of dealing with lizards, as opposed to warm-blooded prey. "We suggest that the capacity to improve performance though learning enables snakes to become efficient predators of variable and unpredictable prey animals." "The ability to respond to a heartbeat is innate, whereas the magnitude of the response is guided by experience," the authors write. The researchers add that wild-caught snakes squeezed harder for longer than their captive-born relatives did. "Our results are the first to demonstrate that snakes use the heartbeat in their prey as a cue to modulate constriction effort and to decide when to release their prey," the researchers write.Įven snakes that had never eaten live prey before reacted the same way in the heartbeat experiments, which means changing their constriction pressure and duration is probably a skill they are born with. The boas usually clenched this prey for about 17 minutes altogether, applying pressure that measured midway between that used for the heartbeat and no-heartbeat groups. When the heart stopped beating about 10 minutes into the constriction, the boas kept squeezing for several minutes but then backed off. ![]() These boas are very unusual and rare: dwarf snakes that max out at about 5 feet long, making them easier to work with in the lab. ![]() A boa constrictor found on Crawl Cay Island, to the northeast of Belize City in the Caribbean.
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