The very name of these snakes - “boas” - hints that they kill their victims, blocking the access of oxygen into the lungs. We decided to check if this is really so.
Information that the boats, before eating their victims, strangle them, as if acting as a stray, can be found in the media (for example, in "Newspaper.ru", on the regional portal 74.ru, V "Moscow Komsomolets", publication "Neva. Tudai" and some others). About this write on Scientific and popular resources, sites Zoo, portals about animals. IN services questions and answers users They tell About this to those who are interested in how exactly the boats kill their victims.
For a long time, it was believed that the boas will strangle their victims before swallowing. However, this has long been doubtful by scientists. So, in 1994, biologist David Hardy said that strangulation is a sufficiently long process, while the victims of boats die or at least lose the opportunity to resist in less than a minute (his work is not freely available, but it Quote Many modern Researchers). Time has a large one meaning For boas, since they often hunt for fairly large and dangerous prey. At the same time, they themselves have neither claws nor teeth in order to fight with it, so they need a mechanism that would allow to immerse the victim as quickly as possible. Hardy put forward the hypothesis that the victims die as a result of stopping blood circulation or heartbeat. She remained unverified for more than 20 years.
Not all scientists agreed with this theory. So, for example, the American Snake Specialist Hesus Rivas, who watched the anacondas in the wild for many years and was a field correspondent of National Geographic, came to the conclusion that they were killing their victims, breaking their spine. He leads in his work Examples of other researchers who confirm his observations. One of them is the case when the Anaconda attacked Capibar. The snake did not have time to eat its victim, as it was attacked by other capybras, so you could study the body of the animal. It turned out that her ridge was broken.
However, in 2015, a biologist from Dikinson College in the United States Scott Bobak after several years of study of boats and the way they kill their victims, together with their team spent experiment. Rats under anesthesia were implanted by ECG electrodes and catheters to measure blood pressure, they also took blood for analysis for further comparison. After that, the euthanized rodents were given to boars and observed the change in their vital indicators. Scientists saw that the blood flow of rats after compression of the snake stopped in a matter of seconds, blood pressure fell, and the venous, on the contrary, grew, immediately began interruptions in the heart rhythm. At the end of the experiment, rats were taken from the boas and Studied The composition of their blood after the attack of the snakes. In rodents, the level of potassium in the blood almost doubled and the pH level decreased, that is, compression seriously violated the work of the rats of rats. The experiment was conducted only on nine snakes and 24 rodents, but Bobak is sure that other types of boaver are also killing. He is going to continue research.
Thus, in the scientific circles there is no consensus yet, how exactly the snakes are killed - whether they break the bones to their victims or stop the blood flow (possibly both, depending on the situation). The last high -tech experiments are quite convincing in favor of the theory with a stop of blood circulation, but in order to argue for sure, additional studies are needed. But it can be considered established that this process is definitely not related to strangulation, that is, interruption of the respiratory process, contrary to the name of these reptiles.
Not true
Read on the topic:
- Is it true that sharks do not eat people?
- Is it true that all fish are dumb?
- Is it true that crocodiles cry, eating their victims?
- Is it true that strips need zebram for disguise?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please inform us of this, highlighting the text with an error and by pressing Ctrl+Enter.
