Do you ever get halfway through a frog and then realise you’re not as hungry as you thought you were?

On a recent night walk at Manu Biological Station, I spotted this Banded Cat-Eyed Snake trying its darndest to swallow what I can only assume is a very tasty frog.

This snake is from a family known as the colubrids, and they typically use a combination of venom and constriction in order to take down their prey. Colubrid venom is fairly harmless to humans, but can often be highly specialised for paralysing or killing their preferred sources of food. Some colubrids even have different kinds of venom for different prey – the Amazon Puffing Snake for example has one type of venom for hunting small mammals such as rodents, and another for hunting birds and lizards.

While there are occasional reports of snakes dying after attempting to consume prey that was too big for them, they tend to get it right most of the time, and are renowned for being pretty stretchy…

I didn’t hang around to see if this snake actually managed to polish off its meal, but I’d be very impressed if it did!

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Banded Cat-Eyed Snake (Leptodeira annulata) with frog, Manu Biological Station, Peru