The cat-eyed water snake has an exquisite taste for crabs. It doesn't swallow its prey whole, like almost every other species of snake. To rip the crab apart, it holds it with its mouth and loops its body around it – then it pulls.
Almost all known snake species eat their prey whole, in a single and sometimes monumental gulp.
But scientists have found an exception to this general rule in the cat-eyed water snake (Gerarda prevostiana), a small serpent native to mangrove swamps throughout Southeast Asia.
A new study has found that these snakes will attack and eat crabs up to five times larger than their jaw can accommodate.
Picky eaters, they only go after freshly molted crabs in the 10-to-15-minute period after the animals shed their old shells, according to the study, published recently in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
"They are quite the little gourmands," says study leader Bruce Jayne, a professor of biology at the University of Cincinnati. (
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