Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life

by Catherine Cooper Hopley

Such was my first entry and observation. Subsequently, and indeed almost on every feeding day, the same kind of thing was to be seen at the Gardens. Many such examples are recorded in my notebook; but of these one or two later notes will suffice to illustrate the subject.

‘Totsey,’ a python born in the Gardens, June 30, 1877,
taking her supper, Sept. 24, 1880.

A young python was hanging from a branch, more than half its body curved as in the accompanying sketch, remaining motionless and quiescent, watching some sparrows which the keeper had just put into the cage. The birds, eyeing certain insects among the gravel, seemed all unconscious of the pair of glistening eyes looking down upon them. Suddenly a movement, a flicker, like the flash of a whip, and the snake had changed its position. Too quick for us to follow the motion, but in that flash of time it now hung like a pendulum, with a sparrow almost hidden in its coils. The snake had precisely measured its distance, reached down, and recoiled with the swiftness of an elastic spring. After a few minutes, feeling that its prey was dead, it prepared to swallow it, holding it encircled in a portion of its body, while the head was free to commence the usual examination. Still hanging there, it held and devoured the bird.

On another occasion, one of the larger pythons caught a guinea-pig in the same manner. This also was so quick in its movements that one scarcely knew what had happened until the snake was seen to have changed its position, some of the anterior coils had embraced a something, and a quadruped was missing. This snake also still hung while eating its meal, the whole process occupying less than ten minutes. In both these cases we saw the prehensile tail in its natural use, while the rest of the body was free for action.

One of the most remarkable cases of what we may call independent constricting powers, that is, two or more parts of the reptile being engaged at the same time, was in some very hungry, or very greedy, or very sagacious little constrictors, the ‘four-rayed snakes,’ Elaphis quater-radiatus.

They are slender for their length, which may be from three to five feet, of an inconspicuous colour, but with two black lines on each side, running the whole length of their body; hence their name, ‘four-lined,’ or ‘four-rayed.’ In the present instance, there were in the same cage three of these, also one young royal python, one small common boa, and one ‘thick-necked tree boa’ (Epicratis cenchris), all constrictors. The day was close and warm for April, and the snakes, reviving from their winter torpor, seemed particularly active and lively. Probably they had not fed much of late, and thought now was their opportunity, for the keeper no sooner threw the birds—finches, and plenty of them for all—into the cage, than there was a general scuffle. Each of the six snakes seized its bird and entwined it, then on the part of the reptiles all was comparatively still. The rest of the poor little birds, fluttering hither and thither, were, however, not disregarded, for although each snake was constricting its captive, several of them captured another bird by pressing it beneath them, and holding it down with a disengaged part of themselves. One of the four-rayed snakes felt its held-down victim struggling, and instantaneously a second coil was thrown round it. Then another caught a second bird in its mouth, for its head and neck were not occupied with the bird already held, and in order to have coils at its disposal, slipped down its first captive, or rather passed itself onwards to constrict the second, the earlier coils not changing in form in the slightest degree, any more than a ring passed down a cord would change its form. The next moment I saw one of those two hungry ones with three birds under its control. It had already begun to eat the first, a second was coiled about eight inches behind, and a good deal of the posterior portion of the reptile was still disengaged when a bird passed across its tail, and instantly that was captured. All this was done by a sense of feeling only, as the snakes did not once turn their heads. Two of these ‘four-rayed’ snakes were so close together, so rapid in their movements, so excited and eager for their prey, that which of them first began his bird, and which one caught the third, it is impossible to affirm confidently.

Whenever either of them was in the same position for one quiet minute, a few hurried strokes of the pencil fixed them in my notebook, and of the hasty though faithful sketches thus made, I present three to the reader on the opposite page.