The video featured here is not for the faint-hearted.
We’ve seen videos of pythons devouring huge meals, even videos of them vomiting up these meals, and this example is just as shocking. A fully grown python has used its immense strength to kill a young deer, constricting the life from the unfortunate fawn. To many observers, the difficult part does not appear to be killing its prey — rather, what to do next.
With no way of breaking down the meal before ingesting it, this python cannot use good table manners and chew before swallowing. Instead, it just goes for gold. Remember that time you tried to fit all those chicken nuggets into your mouth and almost choked to death? Try a whole deer.
Pythons have predictably specialized enough for this to be possible—including stretchy ligaments that allow its jaw to open wide, and super-elastic skin that can expand when the deer is swallowed.
As you could imagine, the python is left looking almost twice the size as before. This meal is not one that is needed often, and now all the python has to do is wait for the long digestion process to get underway.
Watch this video, narrated by none other than Sir David Attenborough:
