Madrid
Updated:
Keep
La boa constrictor (good constrictor) is a killing machine. You can restrain a rat for about 20 minutes before eating it. The lethal embrace is a precise operation, in which the executor is able to measure the heartbeat of his victim to continue squeezing with all his might until he feels the last breath. However, this technique severely restricts their own lungs, so it was a mystery how snakes manage to breathe while strangling and digesting large pieces.
Scientists had suspected that boas adjust different parts of their ribcage for inhalation, depending on whether they’re resting, strangling an animal, or digesting. But so far no one has verified it.
John Capano and Elizabeth Brained of Brown University placed a blood pressure cuff around the ribs of snakes to restrict their movements and found that the snakes do indeed use different sections of the cage chest to breathe when your ribs are constricted.
When the pressure increased to one third of the body, the snakes breathed using their back ribs. However, when the pressure towards the back of their body was increased, the snakes breathed using the ribs higher up. The ribs near the end of his lungs only moved when the front ribs contracted.
A bellows in the lung
According to the authors, who publish their findings in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the posterior section of the lung functions like a bellows, drawing air into the lung when the ribs further forward can no longer move because they are squeezing prey to death.
As subduing and digesting a victim is one of the most forceful things these snakes can do, it was probably essential that they develop the ability to adjust where they breathe before adopting their new rib-clogging lifestyle, to ensure that they won’t suffocate. “It would have been difficult for snakes to develop those behaviors without the ability to breathe,” the researcher concludes.
See them
comments