Question: How do snakes digest?

Adam Hargreaves answered on 20 Jun 2017:

Hi Deus Vult,
That’s a great question, snake digestion and metabolism is one of the most weird things about them. When they haven’t eaten anything snakes have an extremely low resting metabolism, in fact their digestive system is pretty much completely off. Because of this, snakes can live for very long periods without eating anything. Some larger snakes like pythons can live for over a year with nothing to eat.
When snakes do feed, they have no arms or legs to grip the prey with, so they swallow it whole. And because of the way their jaw is hinged, they can swallow prey much wider than their head. It’s always uncertain when food will pass by again, so they tend to just go for anything they can even if it’s a lot bigger than them. Having such a huge meal all in one go for most animals would pose a lot of difficulty, imagine trying to eat a large Dominoes pizza all in one (and now I’m craving a Dominoes…), it’d be a struggle to do and there’d probably be a very sore tummy afterwards.
This is where snakes have adapted to cope with this problem in a very weird way. As soon as they’ve eaten they squeeze the prey item down into their stomach using the muscles on the sides of their body. Then their metabolic rate shoots up massively, and their digestive system goes into overdrive. Very weirdly their intestines, heart, stomach and liver can double or triple in size, probably so they are able to cope with digesting such a massive meal. Once they’ve finished…all their organs go back to their normal size and their metabolic rate drops again.