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Re: storing a food source
On Thu, Sep 17th, 2009 at 8:48 AM, Augusto Haro <augustoharo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the data on snakes. May it be that these snakes lower their
> metabolism after the abundance season?
I suspect they'd almost certainly have to lower their metabolism, since they'd
be waiting for at
least eight months for their next major meal. That doesn't stop them gorging
themselves on
hatchlings when they're available though. I doubt they'd simply let the food
hang around in their
stomaches undigested for that long though, so they'd pretty much have to store
fat on themselves
for the lean times. This is thought to be why these island snakes have
undergone gigantism rather
than insular dwarfism - to enable them to pack on as much fat as possible (and
to have the gape
necessary for swallowing chicks).
>... and/or cannibally eating smaller individuals?
I'd think that such a strategy would quickly wipe out juveniles and drive the
subspecies (Notechis
ater serventyi) to extinction. Most of the islands in the Furneaux group are
fairly small. Then again,
females typically have between 20 and 30 live young at a time, so the survival
rate to adulthood
wouldn't need to be very high.
Apparently they also feed on frogs and small mammals (and no doubt insects for
newborn snakes),
however fully adult animals seem to rely mainly on seasonal gorging of mutton
bird chicks. "Rats
and mice and such small deer" (er... frogs) would seem to be poor fare for a 2m
long tiger snake
as thick as your arm. The larger adults are probably not all that good at
catching small agile
creatures anyway.
http://www.ozanimals.com/Reptile/Chappell-Island-Tiger-Snake/Notechis/ater%20serventyi.html
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Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist Australian Dinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj
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