Continuing with the theme of over-eager swallowing of large prey, I thought I'd share the following case, reported in the literature by Clark (1967). A Horned or Sand viper specimen belonging to the subspecies Vipera ammodytes meridionalis (sometimes called the Eastern sand viper) was caught on the Greek island of Euboia. It looked fat at the time of collecting, and died an hour later.
Dissection revealed what you see in the photo: this small snake had eaten, whole, a centipede 140 mm long. Wow, ambitious. While the possibility exists that handling and subsequent bagging somehow damaged the snake or hastened its demise (Clark 1967), the most likely explanation for its death is that its meal was too large. Let that be a lesson for the festive season :)
Ref - -
Clark, R. J. 1967. Centipede in stomach of young Vipera ammodytes meridionalis. Copeia 1967, 224.
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Clark (1967) spells it that way, but the recommended modern spelling is Euboea.
The centipede is some Scolopendra species, isn't it?
And a bit foolhardy too, I'd reckon; a centipede that big seems like a dangerous adversary for such a small snake.
14 cm long centipedes! In Europe! Scary.
That's not modern, that's Roman. In case it helps, the modern pronunciation is [ËÉvia].
Just another casualty in the eternal war between Centipede and Serpent.
Arms-turned-into-poison-jaws clash with hypodermic teeth, a thousand legs scrape against mortal coils of muscle and scale, in a deadly battle of annihilation!
This time there could be no peace... no remorse... only WAR!
'Let that be a lesson for the festive season'
I'll bear this in mind, should live, 14-cm centipedes appear on the festive table.
I know I certainly wouldn't eat a 14cm long centipede. Or in fact any centipede.
> a centipede that big seems like a dangerous adversary for
> such a small snake.
Isn't it possible that the centipede had bitten the snake before it was eaten, and the snake's death was caused by the centipede's poison?
@David MarjanoviÄ "14 cm long centipedes! In Europe! Scary."
Oh, that's just a little one. Per the archive of all truth aka Wikipedia:
"Scolopendra gigantea, also known as the Amazonian giant centipede, is the largest existing species of centipede in the world, reaching over 30 cm (12 in) in length. It is known to eat bats, catching them in midflight*, as well as rodents and spiders."
*Molinari, J., Gutierrez, E.E., De Ascencae, A.A., Nasar, J.M., Arends, A., and R.J. Marquez. 2005. Predation by Giant Centipedes, S. gigantea, on 3 species of bats in a Venezuelan cave. Caribbean Journal of Science, 4(2): 340-346
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede#Largest_centipede
There's also apparently a Scolopedra gigas of Trinidad, nearly as big.
The extinct (Carboniferous) Euphoberia reached 1 m long, but may have been a millipede.
I saw an apparently-dead centipede about that size in Dobrudja, never previously having seen one larger than about 4cm long, nor thicker than about 3mm, in the US. Of the two dimensions, thickness was the more striking; I'd imagined centipedes simply getting longer. I thought their feet were poisonous, though.
I was going to saw 'bit of more than it could chew' but the snakes dont really bite bits of and they certainly don't chew.
"shallowed more than its stomach could contain" doesn't quite have the same ring to it...
Mind you the snakes luck the centipede didn't eat it!
Indigestion is a terrible thing.
"Eyes bigger than its stomache."
If you have a allergic reaction to the venom of this species it can be quite dangerous! I have captured one a little over 13" in length on a entomology field trip in extreme Southeast Kansas! I have seen bigger but was not able to catch it and watched them capture and eat big lizards and field mice! http://bugguide.net/node/view/8213/bgimage
I knew there are 30-cm-long centipedes in faraway lands. I didn't know there are almost half that long ones in Europe!
I think that means "truly scary". :-)
That's of course another species (your link says Scolopendra heros as opposed to S. gigas and... whatever the Greek one is), but I suppose the venom must be chemically similar.
Forgot to add... are you sure about the length? 13" would be longer than the 30 cm of S. gigas! Your link says 20 cm.
Having been bitten by a Scolopendra, I can testify that I wished I could die for about 24 hours afterward. Not surprised that the snake actually did. Damn, they hurt!
Darren:
There seem to be five Scolopendra species in Greece: S. canidens, S. cingulata, S. clavipes, S. cretica (which is endemic to Creete and its adjacent islands, and can thus be ruled out in this case) and S. dalmatica. I'm guessing that this snake-eaten one from Euboea is an individual of the species S. cingulata*, which is known to reach a length of 15 cm (although 10 cm is more typical). I could be very wrong about this centipede's specific identity though; I know sod all about invertebrates.
* Scolopendra cingulata doesn't seem to have an English wikipedia page, but it has one in French, Polish, and German.
Er, that was, of course, in response to David's, not Darren's comment.
...and that spelling, instead of the correct 'Crete', was brought to you by Typos "R" Us.
The centipede's revenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooFSFR2s7Ig&NR=1
What I find striking about all the cases Darren has thus far presented is the spiky character of the swallowed animals.
I can very well imagine a situation where prey too large is swallowed which the predator realizes soon, yet due to the spikes there is no way it can regurgitate its prey, and therefore the only option is an attempt at complete ingestion - with fatal consequences.
I got bitten once by a Scolopendra in Greece (roughly 5 cm long) and it seems I was lucky: the skin around the bite went numb for a few days and there was a bit of an initial burning sensation, but that was it - no death wish.
I like giant centipedes, but they're pretty horrific predators, at least when they eat tetrapods. Shudder. There are videos online where they eat mice, grabbing them with their maxillopods (not jaws: hollow first pair of legs) and inflicting massive wounds before munch munch munching away. Other times (like with the snake linked to above) they seem to kill the animal by eating it.
Maxillipeds. 'Maxillopods' are a taxonomic grouping of certain crustaceans.
D'oh. Thanks.
That looks really bizarre! Holy crap!
I know this is not as extreme as the examples shown by Darren, but this fire salamander larvea (Salamandra salamandra) I found last year had also eaten a younger larvea of about 2/3 of its own length, and it was so large that the head was still partly visible, when I found it (it suddenly vomited the whole body of its smaller relative):
http://bestiarium.kryptozoologie.net/artikel/bild-des-tages-kannibalism…
BTW, Darren did I ever send you the photo of the frog which had captured a goldfish larger than itself?
Well, all arthropod jaws are ultimately legs. Pretty much anything an arthropod has is ultimately a leg pair.
That's nothing. The live-bearing ones do that before they're born. I'll post the ref on Monday or perhaps tomorrow.
I was going to point out that that was Roman, but see that David got in first as usual; I've seen it on modern maps as 'Evvia' which is a good phonetic transliteration. Famous for the fossil Python euboicus, which comes from the town now known as Kimi (Classical Κυμι, Latin Cumae).
A number of snakes are specialised centipede-eaters, but there are none in Australia despite our impressive scolopendromorph fauna. Some of the most brightly patterned snakes have also been suggested to be centipede mimics, though I don't see much resemblance myself.
John:
Hmm, apparently I chose my words poorly in comment # 1. I meant 'modern' in the sense that 'It's the spelling that we should use nowadays'; I did not mean that the word/spelling itself is some recent invention.
Darren:
I get a pretty strong visceral reaction any time that I see or hear about cases of invertebrates preying on vertebrates. On some subliminal level, that just feels so very wrong to me (it's quite unscientific of me to feel that way, I know, but I can't help it).
For mandibulates, which centipedes are, the jaws are homologous to annelid jaws. Everything else, pretty much, are modified legs.
Not on your life. At present, it looks rather unlikely that arthropods and annelids are closely related. The mandibles are indeed a highly derived leg pair - specifically, they're modified gnathobases.