Freedom was so close, yet so far for this centipede.
After being swallowed whole by a snake, it made one last desperate attempt to escape by eating its way out of her stomach.
Researchers found the dead nose-horned female viper with its prey exploding from its side during a field study in Macedonia on May 14 last year. Both creatures were dead.
Unlucky: A snake was found dead with a centipede’s head sticking out of its abdomen in Macedonia last year by a group of researchers
Researchers believe that the 20cm young snake may have underestimated the size of the prey and paid a fatal price.
The reptile was found on Golem Grad, also known as Snake Island, and was reported in the journal Ecologica Montenegrina by Serbian herpetologist Ljiljana Tomovic last month.
Tomovic came to a conclusion that the juvenile snake also ate its meal alive due to the full-grown insect’s tough invertebrate.
‘We cannot dismiss the possibility that the snake had swallowed the centipede alive, and that, paradoxically, the prey has eaten its way through the snake, almost reaching its freedom,’ she wrote. in an article headed ‘Two fangs good, a hundred legs better’.
The last supper: Researchers believe the viper underestimated the size and strength of the full-grown insect
Not so tasty: The paper ‘Two fangs good, a hundred legs better’ reported that the young viper swallowed its prey whole and alive
A post-mortem revealed the 15cm fighter, also known as Scolopendra cingulata, caused damage to the Vipera ammodytes’ digestive organs.
Tomovic wrote that it wasn’t uncommon for young vipers from Golem Grad to consume such creatures but this case was particularly startling as the prey was over-sized.
‘Unexpectedly, the mass of the prey was greater than that of the predator: the viper weighed 4.2 g and the centipede 4.8 g,’ she wrote.
‘We assume the young snake gravely underestimated the size and strength of the centipede, which itself is known as a ferocious predator.’
