It’s often said that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. And it’s not just dogs—cannibalism is widespread in the animal kingdom. But snakes are usually considered an exception to this rule—a group of species that rarely eats their own, except during times of extreme hardship.

That paradigm seems to be collapsing, though, as study after study finds evidence for cannibalism in snakes. In a new paper, researchers report that some of the most notorious snakes on Earth—cobras—regularly consume their own kind.

When herpetologist Bryan Maritz heard the radio call saying there were “two large yellow snakes fighting,” he rushed into action. Maritz, a researcher with the University of Western Cape in South Africa, was in the Kalahari Desert in