- We’re not sure who’s tougher, the snake-eating snake or the one that survived getting eaten.
“Enough is enough! I’ve had it with these mother***ing snakes in this mother***ing snake!” bellowed Samuel L. Jackson in the famous movie Snakes in a Snake.
Wait, that doesn’t seem right.
Oh yeah, it’s not movie. It’s just what Georgia wildlife authorities discovered by complete chance.
Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) recently shared a story of a bizarre snake encounter. During a survey last year, they found a beautiful, shiny black eastern indigo snake.
After examining the indigo, they realized that the four-foot snake wasn’t alone. Nearby, they discovered two other, seemingly lifeless serpents.
Judging by all the various digestive juices the other snakes were covered in, it was obvious what had happened. The indigo had devoured the two smaller snakes, but ended up overeating and throwing them up.
That’s not the weirdest part, though. After observing the other snakes for a while, one of them — a rattlesnake — popped back to life and slithered off.
Snakes Within Snakes
The Georgie DNR’s weird snake episode actually took place all the way back in November 2023. However, the agency only recently shared the story on its Facebook page.
At the time, DNR official Matt Moore was carrying out a routine survey of eastern indigo snakes in Georgia. These particular slitherers threatened by habitat loss, so Georgia DNR tags them to keep track of their status.
Moore happened across a particularly stout-looking, four-foot-long eastern indigo. So, he did his job and caught the snake.
After tagging it, he noticed something unusual. The indigo had company.
Nearby, Moore noticed two other snakes. Lying on the ground were a small rat snake and a juvenile eastern diamondback rattlesnake.
These types of snakes don’t typically tolerate each others’ company. Moore, however, quickly realized what had happened.
According to Georgia DNR, the indigo “had clearly swallowed and then expelled its meal” — that meal being the other two snakes.
Now, other snakes don’t usually survive being devoured by an indigo. And indeed, the rat snake had shed this mortal coil at some point while being swallowed.
Moore assumed it would be the same story for the rattler. Life, however, is full of surprises, and so was this snake.
“The rattlesnake, initially thought to be lifeless, showed surprising signs of life an hour later. It was later seen basking in the sun instead of taking shelter in a burrow,” Georgia DNR reported.
Not only that, the rattlesnake had a noticeable bulge along its length. The serpent had clearly recently eaten something, probably a large mouse.
Unfortunately, Moore wasn’t able to verify what the mouse had eaten. It would’ve been cool to see how far this rabbit hole goes.
Snake Eater
As weird as the snake-within-a-snake scenario sounds, it’s nothing unusual for eastern indigos. In fact, these snakes are notorious for eating other snakes.
Eastern indigo snakes are large, non-venomous species of snake found in southeastern U.S. And when we say large, we mean that they’re the longest native snakes in the country.
They’re not particularly aggressive snakes, but they are voracious. Eastern indigos will sate their appetite with pretty much any animal smaller than themselves — and due to their size, that gives them a wide range of options.
Their buffet even includes other snakes.
Indigo snakes will readily catch and devour any snake smaller than themselves. They can even eat rattlesnakes without worry, since indigos are completely immune to their venom.
The indigo from our story, however, obviously bit off more it could chew. Considering the rat snake was dead, it’s likely that the indigo killed and ate it first.
It then probably met the rattlesnake and decided to eat that one too. For some reason, however, it was unable to kill the rattler and swallowed it alive.
We can’t imagine the rattlesnake settling down to be digested without a fight, though. The squirming diamondback likely triggered the indigo’s gag reflex and it threw up its entire meal.
Nature can be hardcore like that sometimes.