Geoff Mitchell, a passer-by who took the unusual shot after noticing the d.e.a.d snakes on a roadside, is unsure what happened here. “I spotted a tangle of snakes and got up to look, grabbed my camera, and shot a photo,” he told 3AW radio in Australia. “I had to do some research since I had given it a lot of consideration. Brown snakes appear to consume black snakes on a regular basis, but I’ve never witnessed one snake punch a hole through another.”
According to 3AW, the photograph was submitted to Queensland’s Australia Zoo, which was equally perplexed. “Wow! This is really odd, and we haven’t seen anything like that before. We can’t fathom a black snake crawling inside another snake, but the whole thing is weird. We still think the brown one ate the black one, but we’ll never know for sure “The zoo responded. A snake catcher believes there is more to a photo that appears to show a black snake eating its way out of another reptile in New South Wales than meets the eye.
The shot, taken in Griffith in the Riverina area of the state, caused a flurry of queries on social media: Is it true that the black snake fᴏᴜɢʜᴛ its way out of the brown snake? Or did the black snake slither into the brown snake after it
.d.i.e.d? According to Rob Ambrose of Sydney Snake Catchers, the likely truth is far more mund
ane. “It’s nothing out of the ordinary, though it may appear that way to individuals who don’t see it every day,” he told the ABC. “Brown snakes will occasionally ᴘʀᴇʏ on other snakes.” “But they don’t eat their way out or anything – they can’t even chew,” I’ve seen firsthand.
He thought the snakes had been struck by a car while the brown reptile was consuming the black one. “During the snake consuming the other, it received some kind of blunt force ᴅᴀᴍᴀɢᴇ from a car or was belted. But, judging by the size of the hole, I’d guess a car “He stated. “When roadk.i.l.l is run over, it might rupture. When pressure is applied to them and they rupture, things might stream out like that. As a result, the snake ʙʀᴏᴋᴇ out of the other snake’s gut.”
Geoff Mitchell took the shot of the snakes, which he described as “absolutely insane.” “I was going around one of the canal roads when I spotted this tangle of snakes and stepped out to look and grabbed my camera,” he told Macquarie Radio, adding that both snakes were .d.e.a.d. He thinks the black snake “would have had to be assisted out” of the brown snake. “Perhaps a raptor, kite, or hawk tried to take a bite, and the other one managed to release itself,” he speculated. “I’ve tried to research it on the internet, it seems quite common for brown snakes to eat black snakes, but I’ve seen none where one snake has punched a hole through the other”.