Love at first bite! Male snakes tries to seduce a female before being EATEN and regurgitated alive - as experts say the reptiles are turning on each other- via Herp Digest

Tasmanian snake handler finds copperhead snake eating another smaller snake  

Chris Daly said smaller snake was probably trying to mate before being eaten 

Amazingly it was regurgitated by the larger snake and survived 

By ADAM MCCLEERY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA, 2/4/20

An experienced snake handler has made an interesting discovery - finding a female snake eating her smaller male mate.

Reptile Rescue Tasmania snake handler Chris Daly was called out to a house in Sorell, Tasmania to collect a serpent on Saturday.

'When I pulled up I noticed she was a little, well, girthy, and wasn't moving as quickly as you would expect her to,' he said. 

Experienced snake handler Chris Daly shared images of a female copperhead snake he was called to relocate only to find it midway through ingesting another snake.

'She still had the little guy in her mouth and was moving around while the tail was still wriggling around.' 

'I think he was wanting to have a go and she wasn't having any of it and decided she wanted to eat him instead,' Mr Daly said.   

Amazingly the larger female seemed to change her mind after being caught and decided to regurgitate her potential mate, who was still alive when he was spat out. 

Mr Daly said it wasn't likely she regurgitated the snake because of his size.

Copperhead snake eats and regurgitates another

'She was about two and a half foot and he was about two foot long, so she was probably going to cruise around with the tail hanging out until her stomach acids broke him down enough to swallow a little more, like a noodle,' he said. 

'The male snake was a little lethargic afterwards so I took him back and hydrated him, heated him up and he is doing pretty well. 

'I plan to release him again soon.' 

Mr Daly released the female snake back into an area close to where she was found but said it wasn't wise to do the same with the male snake. 

He didn't want to run the risk of it being eaten again so he will release him in a new area.

Mr Daly said it wasn't unusual for copperhead snakes to eat other snakes, in fact it was their main source of survival in the recent Tasmanian drought. 

'With the drought there are less frogs around, there is less water and prey animals, things are really dry but from our research we found the bigger copperheads were preying on smaller snakes,' he said. 

'Similar to the mainland Red-bellied black snake they can be quiet cannibalistic,' he said.   

Amazingly when he collected the snake she started to regurgitate the smaller male snake (pictured together) which managed to survive the attempted ingestion