Centipede 'almost eats its way out of viper'

A SNAKE has been found with a centipede's head sticking out of its body in what seems to be a last-ditch attempt for survival by the little critter.

Going down fighting ... A young viper was found with a centipede sticking out of its body

A SNAKE has been found with a centipede's head sticking out of its body in what appears to have been a last-ditch survival attempt by the little critter.

Ljiljana Tomovic, a Serbian herpetologist, made the discovery in Macedonia last year when she was tagging snakes and reported her findings last month in the journal Ecologica Montenegrina.

“We cannot dismiss the possibility that the snake had swallowed the centipede alive, and that, paradoxically, the prey has eaten its way through the snake, almost reaching its freedom,” she wrote.

The female nose-norned viper was 20.3 centimetres long, only slightly bigger than the 15.4cm centipede. However, the centipede weighed 4.8 grams, compared with the viper which was only 4.2 grams.

The “David and Goliath” battle occurred on the island of Golem Grad, otherwise known as “Snake Island.”

The paper, entitled “Two fangs good, a hundred legs better”, said that upon dissection it was discovered that the snake was missing all of its organs.

“(This) led us to suppose that the prey caused chemical or mechanical damage to the predator’s digestive organs,” the paper said. “Juvenile vipers ... have been observed to consume (centipedes) but in this case we assume the young snake gravely underestimated the size and strength of the centipede, which itself is known as a ferocious predator.”

It is not the first time that a snake has underestimated its prey.

In 2005, a four-metre Burmese python was found dead after attempting to digest a two-metre-long American alligator.

Epic fail ... Carcass of 1.8m alligator protruding from ruptured mid-section of 4m Burmese Python in Everglades National Park in Florida in 2005.