Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 24, 2022

How do boa constrictors avoid suffocating when they squeeze their prey?

Boa constrictors famously hunt by ambushing their prey and then squeezing the captured animals to death with their muscular coils. But as a boa constricts its body around a victim and cuts off blood flow to that animal's brain, how does the snake avoid squeezing all the air from its...

Jun 21, 2022

Largest python ever found in Florida is 18 feet long and weighs a whopping 200 pounds

The largest Burmese python ever seen in Florida has been discovered, lured out of its hiding place in the Everglades by researchers who used another python as bait, National Geographic reported. The gargantuan snake was a female, measuring nearly 18 feet (5.4 meters) long and weighing 215 pounds (97 kilograms)...

Jun 24, 2022

Snake caught eating even bigger snake in striking new video

A daring snake with a big appetite was recently caught in the act of chowing down on an even larger snake. Video footage showed the ravenous reptile as it swallowed a venomous relative headfirst in a mighty gulp. The unusual sight was filmed in Haddock, Georgia by 82-year-old Tom Slagle,...

Jul 15, 2022

19 python babies and their massive mom nabbed in Florida nursery raid

Under the cover of darkness, two wildlife officials raided an invasive python's nest in a South Florida swamp and successfully wrestled 19 wriggling hatchlings and their mother into a bag and out of the protected habitat. The next day, one of the officials captured a second breeding female — measuring...

Jul 31, 2022

Copperhead snakes: Facts, bites & babies

Copperhead snakes are some of the more commonly seen North American snakes. They're also the most likely to bite, although their venom is relatively mild, and their bites are rarely fatal for humans. These snakes get their name, fittingly, from their copper-red heads, according to the biology department at Pennsylvania...

Sep 8, 2022

Rare Florida snake found dead after choking on a giant centipede

The rim rock crowned snake (Tantilla oolitica) is the rarest snake in North America, and scientists hadn't glimpsed one in the wild in more than four years. But when one of the elusive snakes recently turned up in a state park in Florida, the sighting wasn't a happy one —...

Oct 5, 2022

Jaw-dropping study reveals how pythons can devour super-size prey

Burmese pythons are voracious eaters, swallowing nearly anything that crosses their paths — even sizable white-tailed deer and other large mammals. So is there a limit to how far these slithery carnivores can stretch their jaws to snarf down big prey? Maybe not, scientists recently learned. These pythons are massive...

Oct 14, 2022

Snakes on Planes? Serpents Accelerate Faster Than Fighter Pilots

Snakes can strike faster than the blink of an eye and can reach cheek-jiggling accelerations that would cause a fighter pilot to black out, new high-speed video reveals. The high-speed footage also contradicts the commonly held assumption that venomous vipers were the fastest striking serpents. Instead, ordinary, nonvenomous constrictors such...

Nov 2, 2022

Missing woman’s body discovered in the stomach of 22-foot-long python in Indonesia

The body of a woman in Indonesia was recently discovered in the stomach of a massive, 22-foot-long (6.7 meters) python, which had killed and swallowed its victim whole. The woman, a 54-year-old grandmother named Jahrah, went missing in Jambi province on the island of Sumatra on Oct. 23, according to...

Nov 14, 2022

Cobra bites boy, boy bites it back (the boy was fine, the snake wasn’t)

A venomous snake has died after being bitten by a small boy. No, you didn't read that wrong. In a bizarre reversal of nature, an 8-year-old boy in India killed a cobra after biting it in retaliation. The child bit back at the dangerous animal after receiving a rare venom-free...

Nov 16, 2022

Gruesome video reveals the moment a 5-foot alligator corpse was cut from the gut of a dead python

A team of veterinary pathologists recently extracted a 5-foot-long (1.5 meters) alligator corpse from the body of an 18-foot (5.5 m) Burmese python that was euthanized in Florida. The necropsy, or animal autopsy, was captured in a jaw-dropping video and recently went viral on Instagram. The chunky python was the...

Dec 30, 2022

7 strange snake stories from 2022

There's no denying that snakes are some of the most fascinating, bizarre and, yes, frightening reptiles on the planet. From an eastern kingsnake swallowing a timber rattlesnake nearly twice its size to a nasty battle between a venomous cobra and an 8-year-old boy, there was no shortage of strange snake...

Jan 30, 2023

Cottonmouth snakes: Facts about water moccasins

Cottonmouths (Agkistrodon piscivorus), also called water moccasins, are venomous snakes found in the southeastern United States. They're called cottonmouths because of the white coloration on the inside of their mouths, which they display when threatened. Cottonmouths are semiaquatic, so they're comfortable both swimming in water (hence their other common name...

Feb 2, 2023

'Leonardo DiCaprio' snake with bright orange eyes discovered in Panama jungle

Slithering among shrubs in the foothill forests of Panama, there is a snake the color of burnt embers, with round eyes like glowing coals. The snake, soon to be named DiCaprio's snail-eating snake (Sibon irmelindicaprioae), is one of five newfound species living in the jungles of Central and South America....

Apr 26, 2023

The biggest snake in the world (and 9 other giant serpents)

With exquisitely patterned bodies, predatory strikes that accelerate faster than a fighter jet, and even a capacity for flight, snakes are a fascinating group of reptiles. Some deserve attention for one feature in particular: their enormous size. From boa constrictors to reticulated pythons, we share the planet with some incredible...