STUNNING PICS FROM INSIDE SNAKE'S DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
1.jpgScientists have used the latest imaging techniques to peer inside the digestive system of a python an hour after it had eaten a rat whole.
Hi-tech scanning methods to explore the animals' anatomy were used, creating a series of stunning images which highlighted specific organs and made them appear in different colours.
It took 132 hours for the snake to fully digest the rat, scientists said, when they presented the study at the Society for Experimental Biology's annual meeting in Prague, Czech Republic.
Scientists were able to carry out a computer tomography or CT scan and used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the 5kg snake.
The images revealed the gradual disappearance of the rat's body. At the same time, the snake's intestine expanded, its gall bladder shrank and its heart increased in volume by 25 per cent.
The researchers, Henrik Lauridsen and Kasper Hansen, both from Aarhus University in Denmark, explained that the increase in the size of the snake's heart was probably associated with the energy it needed to digest its meal.