The glorious majesty of nature never fails to impress.
In 2012, biologists on an expedition to East Timor in southeast Asia spotted a brahminy blind snake wriggling out of somewhere quite unexpected: the rear end of a common Asian toad. "It's quite surprising that a vertebrate, which has lungs, was able to survive," says O'Shea.
The snake may be better equipped for the journey than most species. With a long, slender body just a few millimetres wide, it effortlessly burrows through tiny holes and crevices in its environment. Passing through the narrow confines of a toad's digestive tract should not be too much of a challenge in principle. O'Shea thinks the snake crawled through the toad's gut instead of simply being carried through by muscle contractions that move food along.
Almost certainly the biggest problem the blind snake had to deal with was a prolonged lack of oxygen. As an underground dweller and due to its small size, it needs less air to survive than many animals. But still, there is a limit to how little it can tolerate. "Theoretically, the time it takes to get through the gut would determine if it lives or dies," says O'Shea.
The researchers do not know how long it took the snake to journey through the toad's gut. But although they watched it wriggle out alive, it died about five hours later.
The brahminy blind snake, however, probably had little impact on the toad that ate it, beyond the strange feeling of having an animal move through its stomach and intestines. "The toad just appeared to be embarrassed," says O'Shea. After all, it had a snake sticking out of its bottom.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170424-there-are-animals-that-can-survive-being-eaten
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