by It was a lucky day for the king cobra to have ᴇᴀᴛᴇɴ a lizard. With ᴅᴇᴀᴅʟʏ venom, ᴅᴀɴɢᴇʀᴏᴜs ᴀᴛᴛᴀᴄᴋ, once the ᴘʀᴇʏ is ᴘᴏɪsᴏɴᴇᴅ by the king cobra, it can only wait for ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ to come.
It is known that, depending on the living environment, the skin of the king cobra has different colors, usually snakes live in bright places, rivers, streams, ponds with light skin; while snakes live in places with little light, deep forests, high mountains, and caves with dark skin.
The skin on the head and back has a color that varies according to the habitat, the color range from lead black, tan, olive brown to brownish gray, greyish white; especially blue is extremely rare. Faint white or yellow stripes run the length of the body.
Lizards inherently have thick skin that is immune to ᴘᴏɪsᴏɴ, however, in front of the king cobra, that shield becomes useless.
The strong snake slowly approached and grabbed the lizard’s head. The lizard was overwhelmed and surprised, it sᴛʀᴜɢɢʟᴇᴅ to avoid the ᴋɪʟʟᴇʀ’s jaws. However, unable to dodge, the cobra promptly inserted its ᴘᴏɪsᴏɴous tooth into the lizard’s neck, leaving it stunned and helpless. The poor lizard was sᴛʀᴀɴɢʟᴇᴅ again before being put into the cobra’s mouth. It becomes the full meal of the venom boss.
How did the snake ᴅɪɢᴇsᴛ the lizard?
Contrary to popular belief, snakes don’t unhinge or dislocate their jaws. Instead, they use a specialized collection of skull bones, ligaments and muscles to open their mouths incredibly wide, allowing a snake to ᴘʀᴇʏ on animals that can be significantly larger than the snake itself. The size of this opening, which herpetologists call the “gape,” places an upper limit on the size of ᴘʀᴇʏ a snake can eat.
“The snake jaw isn’t attached to the skull — it’s attached to ligaments,” Calhoon, curator of forests at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, said. “They have a very flexible ligament jaw structure that allows them to stretch and open much wider.”
After getting its jaws stretched around a meal, a snake’s next step is to move the ᴘʀᴇʏ through the serpentine digestive tract, where digestive juices in the stomach can start breaking down tissues. When eating smaller ᴘʀᴇʏ, a snake can use its jaws to push a worm or rodent down its digestive tract, but for larger meals, snakes use bones in their head and jaw to “move forward on the ᴘʀᴇʏ,” Klaczko, a zoologist at the University of Brasília in Brazil, said.
