Boa constrictors are known for how they quickly kill their prey by wrapping their bodies around them so they can’t breathe.
However, contrary to popular belief, boa constrictors actually kill their prey by cutting off their blood supply, which is actually a much quicker, more effective method, according to National Geographic News.
When a boa tightens its body around its victim, it reportedly throws off the prey’s circulatory system.
“The heart literally doesn’t have enough strength to push against the pressure,” stated study leader Scott Boback, a vertebrate ecologist at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
The discovery, which was published in The Journal of Experimental Biology, was made by Boback and his colleagues after they began to question the assumption of how boas kill their prey over two decades ago, according to Discovery News.
“What Hardy saw was the speed at which the animals were dying…they were dying way too quickly for it to be suffocation,” Boback said.
“He suspected that it was circulatory or cardiac arrest because of the speed at which death was occurring.”
For the study, Boback and his team reportedly monitored what happens to a snake’s victim internally as it was being killed. The victims during the experiments were reportedly anesthetized.
Researchers found that ECG electrodes and blood pressure catheters applied to the rats reportedly revealed that their blood circulation shut down in a matter of seconds.
“I remember being in the room and the students were looking at the data in disbelief that it happened that fast,” Boback said.
“We could see the arterial pressure go down, the venous pressure go up and we could see this right when the snake was doing it .”
The recent discovery reportedly shows the evolution of the snake’s ability to scale up the size of their meals, even killing prey that were larger than themselves.
“By understanding the mechanisms of how constriction kills, we gain a greater appreciation for the efficiency of this behavior and the benefit it provided early snakes,” stated Boback.