We all eat the wrong thing sometimes, but this 3.66m-long South African python made a major error. It swallowed a porcupine whole. Spoilers: No, it did not survive.
LiveScience reports that a bicyclist captured these photos of the snake right after it had gulped down its meal. At the time, park rangers speculated that it had eaten something like a small warthog.
But then the snake appears to have suffered a setback. A week after these photos were taken, park rangers found it dead. Apparently, it had fallen off a ledge. But why would that kill a snake? When the rangers opened the snake up, they discovered the answer.
It had eaten a 13.6kg porcupine, whose quills probably pierced its digestive tract in the fall and killed it. In this image, you can see the mostly-undigested porcupine, whose quills lodged in the snake’s stomach, at right.
Now we know who wins when a snake fights a porcupine. Nobody.
[via LiveScience]