By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Staff
Writer | June 14, 2018 11:00am ET
There's something strange about
the five newly discovered snakes in Ecuador: Unlike most snakes that dine on
rats, lizards and other small animals, these slithery reptiles eat snails.
And that's pretty much all these
snakes can eat. There are now 75 known species of snail-eaters, according to a
new study on the reptiles.
"The jaws of these snakes
are modified so much that they cannot eat anything that isn't a snail or a
slug," said lead study author Alejandro Arteaga, a doctoral student with
the American Museum of National History in New York. "Sometimes, you can
see [one] hanging from vegetation with a snail in its mouth," he said. [7
Shocking Snake Stories]
Indeed, snail-eating snakes have
a jawline that has evolved to slurp the snail right
out of its shell — but the snakes do this without
suction (in other words, it's not the way we slurp oysters from a shell). To
extract their escargot, the snakes push their lower jaws into the shell and
grasp the flesh of the slimy critter with their curved teeth. Once the snakes
have a firm grasp, they pull the prey out without crushing the shell — a
process that usually takes a few minutes.
This snail-slurping "is an
interesting adaptation," Arteaga told Live Science. Because not many
snakes feed on these snails, the predators don't have much competition for
food, he added.
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