Snake Looks Ridiculous Swallowing An Egg Three Times The Size Of Its Head

Snake egg

This almost doesn’t seem real…

It reminds me of the scene in Shrek when he blows up the snake like a balloon animal.

Snakes come in all shapes and sizes but they are widely known for being able to swallow things that are impressively large… whole.

Snakes have a unique jaw structure that allows them to open their mouths very wide, sometimes up to 180 degrees, and stretch their lower jaw apart from their upper jaw allowing them to swallow prey larger than their own mouth. They also have flexible skin that can stretch and expand as they digest their meal. Some snakes will even swallow eggs that are larger than their heads.

This snake here was seen chasing down a massive blacksmith lapwings egg, a pretty common bird on the savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa. Egg-eating snakes are also quite common in the area.

To the surprise of the onlookers here in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, the snake took the egg on whole. The video shows the snake making its mouth much larger and wrapping around the width of the whole egg without braking it. The snake gets it all in there and starts to swallow it as it shuts its mouth.

The egg, now sitting right behind the snake’s head makes it look like it was blown up like a balloon as it has a massive round thing sitting there.

According to Latest Sightings, it was quite the scene:

“We were sitting next to a water hole, enjoying a hot cup of coffee, and admiring the views. As we were busy packing up, I heard a pair of very unhappy blacksmith lapwings. They were mobbing something on the ground. I immediately thought snake.

Then, with an egg in its mouth, the snake began slithering away in one of the most comical and bizarre manners I have ever seen.

It was also very vulnerable where it found the egg at first. We didn’t get to see the snake swallow the egg in its entirety, but let’s just say I have seen more pangolins than common egg eaters eat eggs.

That is how rare a moment this was for me.”

And I can’t help but ask… why?

I mean, wouldn’t eating something three times the size of your head make you a sitting duck for other hungry predators? You just stole and egg from a bird and now you’re going to try and get away looking like that?

Of course, I understand that this is the way snakes eat, since they don’t have teeth for chewing and use gastric fluids to digest their foods, but still… it just looks ridiculous.

Wild stuff.

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