Snakes like to eat their food alive.

Snakes feed on insects, frogs, small birds, mammals, fish and lizards.

Snakes have three ways of killing animals before they eat them: poison, crushing, or suffocating.

this python eats food by crushing their prey before swallowing

Venomous snakes inject poison into animals with their fangs.

Non-venomous snakes squeeze their victims to crush their bones before they eat them or they suffocate the animal and eat them quickly.

Snakes can detect their prey with their flickering tongue. This helps them to work out where to travel to find the animal, even if the animals are down a hole in the ground.

Therefore, snakes can hunt for their food, instead of waiting for an animal to pass in front of them.

This snake injects poison into an animal (with its fangs) to kill it before eating it 

Photographer: Martina Nicolls

Martina Nicolls: SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM