How to Feed a Hognose Snake

Video Transcript

"Now feeding your Hognose can be the trickiest thing. As I've said before, their regular prey items in the wild are mostly toads and some cases lizards and sometimes it's hard to switch them over. Once you've switched them over, very easy to feed them, you just present the snake the prey item and usually it takes it right away. We're going to do this with this Mexican Hognose Snake which has already been switched over. I use forceps again; it just keeps the scent of the mouse, on the mouse instead of you getting your human scent all over it. And, it's a lot easier to give this to the snake instead of putting your big hand in front of it which may scare the snake a little bit. But, what I'm going to do is wiggle it a little bit in front of her of which she'll get the smell of it. There she goes. You can see the snake is working it will her jaws to bring the snake inside her throat where muscles will take over. But they use their jaws in assisting them to pull the food down into their throat. Snakes have very flexible skulls; they're made up of a lot of different bones which allows her a lot of flexibility. Their lower jaw consists of two lower mandibles which also assists in the snake helping pull the food down the throat."