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Egg-eating Snake (Dasypeltis fasciata) photo by Bill Bouton
To continue “egg week” we encounter a creature which not only reproduces through laying eggs, it lives entirely by eating them! Meet Dasypeltis, a genus of colubrid snakes of Africa. There are 12 recognized species of Dasypeltis snakes ranging across the great continent (they are non-venomous, by the way). These serpents are all oophagous , which is to say they eat eggs… In fact they are exclusively oophagous—they eat nothing but eggs! Gosh!
The adult snakes range in size from 30-100 cm (12-39 inches) in length and come in a variety of unobtrusive colors. They have ridiculous jaws of vast flexibility which can expand to many times the diameter of their head so that they can eat eggs which are much wider than their bodies. This leads to some disturbing-yet-amazing-photographs which would make even the greatest champion-eater envious. Egg-eating snakes have a highly developed sense of smell–they are capable of telling if an egg has gone off, or if it has developed past a point where it is easily digestible.
Photo by David A. Northcott
These egg-eating snakes do not have teeth as such; instead they have hard ridges on their spine which allow the snakes to break open the eggs after swallowing them. So once the egg is safely inside the snake’s gullet, the hungry creature breaks it into pieces inside itself and sucks the nutrients out (whereupon it regurgitates all the shell fragments). This strikes me as an insane way to get nutrients, but it apparently works surprisingly well: snake nutritionists (?) calculate that “snakes are remarkably efficient and waste very little of the contents of an egg.” Because of the way egg-eating works in the wild–where one tends to discover a lot of eggs at once or none at all—the snakes can eat a number of eggs in one uh…sitting (can I say “sitting” in this context?). They then go semi-dormant during the wet season (all of which means that distraught reptile enthusiasts sometimes force feed quail eggs to their pet egg-eating snakes—which also strikes me as insane).
Photo by Jonathan Brecko
Today is World Egg Day! At first I had an image of the entire planet splitting open and some giant hatchling slithering out into the galaxy—WorldEgg Day–but a moment of reflection revealed that WED is instead a day for the entire world to celebrate eggs. Indeed the World Egg Day Website reassures us that, “World Egg Day is a unique opportunity to help raise awareness of the benefits of eggs and is celebrated in countries all around the world.”
This website has been unflagging in its dedicated to oviparous creatures. Catfish, turkeys, the vast majority of snakes, all fowl, and even the amazing platypus and echidna are creatures which reproduce by means of eggs. They are all well worth celebrating! Hooray!
Yet somehow, I feel like the World Egg Day High Council (an arm of the even greater International Egg Commission) cares little about ovuliparity (external reproduction via egg). Instead they are concerned only with devouring eggs. They are in fact ovivores of the highest degree—to such an extent that they have built an international organization to promote the continuous eating of eggs to the exclusion of all else. We live in a strange world.
Dasypeltis scabra feeding on a fresh pigeon egg
However, since I am an ovivore myself (although not exclusively) I support the council’s overarching plans—at least to a degree. In order to celebrate World Egg Day, allow me to propose a suitable mascot for the event—the egg-eating snake, Dasypeltis, a delightful genus of reptiles which lives up to the council’s ultimate utopian dreams of eating nothing but eggs. To quote exotic-pets.co.uk, “The Egg Eating Snake must be one of the nicest snakes we have ever come across. With no teeth, a calm nature, [the snake lives entirely] on eggs…no more defrosting rodents!”
There are 11 species of snake within the Dasypeltis genus and all have evolved to feed exclusively on eggs. These non-venomous snakes live throughout Africa, but prefer wooded areas with large numbers of birds. The snakes possess acute senses which allow them to determine whether an unbroken egg is rotten or too developed for them to eat. Not only are the snakes gifted at hiding and climbing trees, they also have specialized anatomical features for egg consumption including supremely flexible jaws, supple necks, expandable balloon-like throats, and internal vertebral knobs for bursting the egg once consumed. The snakes regularly consume eggs much larger than their own heads. After eating breakfast, the poor creature looks like a maraca! Once the unbroken egg is swallowed whole, the snake’s internal organs burst it open and leech all nutrients out of it. The indigestible shell is regurgitated. Virtually no nutrients are wasted.
Common egg-eater snake (Dasypeltis scabra). Photo by Mond76
Finally, and best of all, Dasypeltis fasciata not only lives entirely on eggs: the snake also reproduces by egg! It is an Oviparous ovivore. Females lay one or two clutches of 6-25 eggs each. The little eggs measure 36 mm x 18 mm (1.4 x 0.7 inches) and are sometimes eaten by rodents or lizards.
You could write to the International Egg Council and explain why this snake would be the perfect mascot to help them popularize eggs. Undoubtedly the exalted high egg commissioners would quickly acknowledge that there can be no purer avatar of the incredible edible egg than this lovable snake. Happy World Egg Day!
ferrebeekeeper 