Welcome to our snake feeding.
We'll follow Lalainya, the living collections manager, as she feeds all the snakes that call the Nature Museum home.
While all snakes are carnivores, each snake is going to eat their supper in a unique way.
Later in this video, Lalainya will be feeding our snakes mice and rats that have already passed away.
Snakes are part of the natural world and like us they need a healthy diet to survive.
So let's join Lalainya in the Look-In Lab.
So we're in the Look-In Lab with Lalainya and we're going to be learning about what the snakes at the Nature Museum eat.
So, Lalainya, where are we going to go?
So we're going to start in the Look-In Lab and we're going to feed Gertie, our Chicago gartersnake.
Then we're gonna go out to Mysteries of the Marsh and feed a couple of snakes out there.
And then we're gonna come back into the Look-In Lab and feed the rest of our snakes.
Awesome.
The first snake we're going to feed today is Gertie, she is a Chicago gartersnake.
They eat worms and fish and frogs and toads, here we feed her mostly earthworms and minnows.
Gartersnakes are found pretty much everywhere in the Chicago region.
We have Chicago gartersnakes as well as plains gartersnakes.
We feed most of our snakes here at the museum once every other week, so about twice a month,
but Gertie needs to eat more often because she gets prey that she digests a little bit faster.
So we feed her almost every day.
So we're gonna feed her an earthworm today and you'll see her tongue flick and, there we go,
and she will grab that and hopefully she'll stay out after she gets it.
There we go, there we go.
So this is a pretty thin prey so she just grabbed it and swallowed it, but they eat their prey in one piece, no matter what size it is.
So she grabs it, starts to swallow it, and then the muscles in her esophagus help take it down to her stomach.
Now, we're going to move on to feeding some snakes that have a different kind of diet, those that eat rodents.
Before we continue, a brief content warning.
We're going to start feeding the rest of our snakes here rodents.
They have been frozen and de-thawed, but if you're a little squeamish or maybe unsure,
go ahead and get a grown-up to watch these segments first.
If you're skipping this segment, don't worry, there's plenty more to see with Supper with the Snakes.
Okay next we're going to feed Bandit.
Bandit is a bull snake and we are going to feed Bandit a small rat and we do not feed live prey.
We get the rats and mice we feed our snakes frozen, we thaw them out, and then we feed.
So it is feeding time,
Bandit is very aware already that her dinner is ready.
Might take her a sec to find out exactly where it is, but when she does she's going to grab it very quickly.
And snakes eat their prey whole.
So she's going to situate that rat into a good position so that she can swallow it.
You might notice that rat, while it's not a huge one,
she does have to open her mouth pretty wide,
wider than humans would be able to open their mouths, to take a bite.
They're able to do that because, one reason is because their mandible is actually two pieces and there's a ligament that allows the two pieces to stretch out.
They also are able to open their mouths a little bit wider because of extra bone.
Snake skin can also stretch out which allows when they swallow some large prey,
and their muscles and their esophagus will push, will push the prey down.
Okay so I'm about to feed Herbert the hognose snake a small mouse.
It's actually a hopper mouse, that's the jargon that the mouse and rat breeders use for the different sizes of mice and rats.
In the wild, Herbert might prefer toads and other amphibians or even some small reptiles
and if you notice the pointy, turned up nose, that's what this species of snake would use to dig around in sandy soil to find some toads.
So I'm going to offer this small mouse,
and just like Bandit, Herbert is probably going to adjust the position of the mouse so he can get that down.
So, I'm going to feed Fang who is a king snake.
Fang is getting a small mouse.
In the wild Fang would not be eating mice, Fang would be eating other snakes.
Fang is a king snake and king snakes eat other snakes,
however we do not feed Fang snakes and Fang seems perfectly happy with the mice that we feed her.
And even though that's a small mouse it's pretty big for Fang's head.
Snakes aren't going to bite their prey in half, they swallow whole.
Now, we're gonna feed Toby, another foxsnake,
and it looks like Toby is anticipating that his meal is coming.
So we are going to carefully offer a large mouse and Toby took it.
This is a little bit smaller than I usually offer to Toby,
but you'll still get to see him open his mouth very wide to get that down.
Next, we're going to feed Cartman.
Cartman is a corn snake and his coloring is a little bit different than what you might see in the wild.
We're going to offer, there we go.
They move pretty quickly in the wild rodents run pretty fast, so they have to be pretty quick to catch their prey.
And with most of these I don't think they exhibited the behavior of coiling around the prey,
but they will do that to constrict it a little bit, so there he's adjusting so he can swallow it.
So next we're feeding Blackstar who is a gray rat snake, formerly known as a black rat snake.
Gray rat snakes, as you can see here she's part way in the branches, like to hang out in trees a lot
and bask and because of that they sometimes like to eat birds and eggs.
They also really like to eat rats, which is why they're called rat snakes, so we are going to offer Blackstar a small rat today.
So you can see here she coiled around the prey.
If this were a live prey item that would kill the prey.
However, we feed our snakes frozen rats and mice,
but in the wild she would need to kill her prey and that is how they do it.
That's our snake feeding for the evening.
Thank you Lalainya for giving us such an up-close look at our snakes.
Snakes are a fascinating part of the natural world.
I'll see you in the next activity.