Do Snakes Chase and Eat Other Snakes?

07.12.2004 - I plan to make this my worst snake blog page of them all. There's really no point for it whatsoever, except to showcase the above photo, in which a large snake appears to be chasing a small snake. I say "appears", because first of all, that's a legless lizard chasing the small ringneck snake, and second of all, it's not chasing at all. I simply put both of these snakes on the carpet at the same time, and they wound up in this configuration.

In nature, it's possible that the legless lizard would in fact eat a small Ringneck Snake like this, but of course, once critters are captured and being messed around with, they are in no mood to eat anything. That's a common misconception I see from the public. People catch some sort of wild critter, and their first instinct is, "Ooh, it must be hungry, what does it eat?", followed by ground-up hamburger appearing in copious amounts inside the bucket/shoebox or whatever new habitat the poor critter has found itself in. There's been many times in which I show up at a customer's house at which I've trapped an animal, and I find the trap strewn with the scattered remains of yesterday's dinner. Of course, the animal never eats it. If giant aliens caught you and took you away and stuck you in a giant glass jar, would your first thought be to gobble down the celery and peanut butter that they threw at you? I think not. The critter you've caught isn't interested in eating, it's interested in getting the hell out of the mess you've put it in. So no, in the above photo, that's not a real snake chase with intent to eat. But it sure looks like it though, doesn't it? That's the magic of photography - photos never lie. End communication.

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