186 BEASTS AND MEN 
larger snake will swallow not only the food but the smaller 
snake also at the same time. Snakes are guilty of a senseless, 
one might almost say mechanical, gluttony. Of this I had 
interesting evidence in an episode which occurred near the be- 
ginning of the seventies, when we were still at Spielbuden- 
platz. At that place we kept our snakes in large dark cages 
heated from below by hot-water pipes. We used, moreover, 
to keep the animals wrapt up in rugs, which were only removed 
when they were being fed. One day we received a boa-con- 
strictor about eleven feet long—a very large size for this 
species, of which (contrary to the popular idea) I have never 
seen a specimen of more than thirteen feet. Immediately on 
his arrival I gave him a large rabbit, which he ate during the 
night. Thinking that he had had enough for the present I 
gave him nothing the next night, but left him as usual wrapt up 
in the rug. He apparently mistook the rug for food, for he 
attempted to swallow it. When I came next morning I found 
half the rug down the animal’s throat. The animal itself was 
suffocated and quite dead. 
I have never again come across an instance of so strange 
a death, but I have often lost snakes through their savage 
fights for prey. About ten years ago I gavea rabbit toa 
couple of yellow pythons, one nine feet and the other seven 
feet long. The next morning I found that the nine-foot 
python had swallowed not only the rabbit but the seven-foot 
python as well. From later observation I infer that both 
snakes must have attacked the rabbit at the same time, one 
at the head and the other at the tail. Both then proceeded 
to swallow the rabbit from opposite ends, and in this way the 
smaller snake was swallowed as a sort of continuation of the 
rabbit by the larger one. I could easily see on the following 
morning the outline of the smaller, in the body of the larger 
snake. 
The power of digestion possessed by snakes is perfectly 
extraordinary. The most remarkable case of heavy feeding 
which has come under my observation occurred about ten 
