What do zoos feed big snakes, such as pythons?
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Disney and Pixar's Elio. In theaters June 20th. Tickets available now. Rated PG. Parental guidance suggested. From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Mark Sanchez. Um. Okay, Mark. Think like a python. Be a python. Eat like a python.

Like a python. Hey, Mark, whatcha doing? Is that a fully loaded mega burrito from Benicio's Burritos? Yeah, with extra guac and double beans. I'm practicing to beat Sandin in our annual Biggest Burrito Belly competition. This year, I'm taking my inspiration from some of the largest snakes in the world, pythons and anacondas. Did you know they swallow their prey whole?

I'm going to do that with this burrito. You know, I was actually wondering about how big snakes eat because we got this question from a listener. My name is Evelyn. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin. And my question is, what do zookeepers feed bigger snakes such as pythons? Sometimes they're going to be fed rats, just bigger rats than other snakes. And occasionally they're also going to feed them rabbits or even chickens.

I'm Emily Taylor. I'm a professor of biological sciences at Cal Poly, which is a university in San Luis Obispo, California.

Seeing pythons eat is absolutely amazing. Pythons have huge mouths, meaning that they can basically stretch their mouths really wide open so that they can eat something that weighs as much as they do without taking bites of it and without using their hands to help them. It's like eating an enormous hot dog that weighs as much as you do.

It's really impressive. What they do is they grab the prey item and then they immediately wrap their coils around it and they constrict it. And they're actually not suffocating it. What they're doing is they're constricting blood flow so that eventually the prey animal is going to slowly fall asleep and die because of lack of blood to its brain.

And then the python will eat the prey animal, usually head first. And it does so by walking its head over the prey item and stretching its jaws out to be able to accommodate that huge prey item. After that, it has to sit and digest for a long time, sometimes several weeks before it poops out a little pellet full of some hair, maybe some bone fragments. And that's about it. Um, uh,

Mark, that burrito is like the size of a cat. Like a really big cat. It's the size of a big cat wearing a puffy jacket and platform shoes. I know. I've been working my way up to this size for three weeks now. I think I just need a few more days of jaw stretching and practice burritos. And I'll have this contest in the bag.

Wow, that's some serious dedication. What made you pick the Python strategy? Well, last year I tried to eat like a hamster, but I almost got disqualified for storing all the sour cream in my cheek pouches. Okay, here it goes. Oh, delicious. Here, kitty. Well, since Mark's got his mouth full, well, really full, I'll finish up this episode. ♪

If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe to Moment of Um wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you love nocturnal knowledge, check out the Brains On podcast where we have a whole episode all about what zoo animals do at night. If you have a question, we'd love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact. See you next time and the next day and every weekday. Until then, um...

Buh.