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Python » Animal
Python molurus is one of the world’s largest snakes, with records of up to 9.15 m in length. It belongs to the family Boiidae (subfamily Pythoninae) and is distributed across Asia from Pakistan to Indonesia and South China, with two distinct subspecies. P. m. molurus is the Indian python (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka) while P. m. bivittatus is the Burmese python (Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Peninsula Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia and South China).The Burmese Python frequents forests near water bodies , swamps, mmmarshes and grasslands. It can move easely in the trees, on the ground and in water, and it is a nocturnal hunter. It has special heat receptors to locate warm prey. Like other boiids, the Burmese python kills by constriction and suffocation, coiling around the prey and slowly tightening the coils further each time the victim breathes out. It does not crush. Prey animals include a wide range of taxa from small mammals to deer and even leopards.
The skull of the Burmese python is very highly ossified, with dense bone and complex sutures. Like other snakes, it has lost the upper temporal bar, jugal, squamosal, and epipterygoid. Snakes have an inner ear and stapes, but no tympanum, no auditory meatus, and no tympanic cavity. A bony interorbital septum is present
Python m. bivittatus is a macrostomatan (‘big-mouthed’) snake that uses its exceptionally flexible (kinetic) skull to create an enormous gape . The upper and lower jaws, and the bones of the palate, are loosely attached to a rigid box comprising the braincase and part of the skull roof (frontals and parietal). The quadrates have a greater freedom of movement than in lizards, partly due to a reduced contact with the pterygoids. Thanks to the extended supratemporals, they are positioned well behind the craniocervical joint, further increasing the potential gape. Since the supratemporals are also loosely connected to the skull, they can swing out laterally, another factor affecting the size of the mouth and the width of the throat. There is no bony contact between the anterior ends of the dentaries (highly elastic ligament) so they are able to spread apart
As a result of these modifications, the python can swallow prey 4-5 times the diameter of its own head. The jaws and palatal elements can also move independently about the midline, and each bears a series of extremely sharp, posteriorly recurved teeth. These are used to draw the prey into the mouth using a ratchet action that alternates between the two sides of the skull
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