Crush of Death - 03:40 am
18 Nov 2009
Yet another extraordinary sighting in Botswana’s Moremi Game Reserve.
A Southern African Rock Python (Python sebae natalensis) had caught an impala lamb. It had nearly finished swallowing the lamb when I spotted it.
This was great to see during the daytime as pythons are more active at night when they can locate their prey easily by using heat receptors found on the upper lip.
The mother impala seemed confused as what to do and stood watching the python, she was still in the area 3 hours later, looking for her missing lamb, the python was nowhere to be seen.
It is a myth that pythons crush their prey. They will coil around the animal to suffocate it and once it is dead they will swallow it head first.
In order to be able to swallow the prey they need to dislocate their jaw. It is quite a process of getting the jawbones back into place, it took this python over 30 minutes.
This was a large python, they will usually grow to 3-4 meters and this one was at least 2.8 meters. It had recently shed its skin, the remnants can be seen still stuck on its head.
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