A recent study conducted in Brazil has revealed that there are a total of 207 known snake species that exhibit cannibalistic behavior. This conclusion was drawn after thorough research using the Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Scopus databases which collect data on cannibalism among snakes. The researchers involved in this study were Bruna B. Falcão, Vinícius A. São Pedro, and Omar M. Entiauspe-neto from the Universidade Federal de São Carlos and Instituto Butantan in Brazil.
the team classified the occurrences of cannibalism into different categories such as maternal-offspring cannibalism, cannibalism between offspring, sexual cannibalism, combat-dance cannibalism, and undetermined cases based on their findings from these databases.
Moreover, they divided the events into three groups: wild or natural events (when observed in a natural setting), captivity (when observed in captivity), and unknown (when an animal is dissected but the circumstances leading too the event are unknown). It was found that most of these events were opportunistic with a majority occurring in captivity.
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The researchers also noted that the highest number of observed cannibalistic behavior was among snakes belonging to the Colubridae (29%),Viperidae (21.2%), and Elapidae (18.9%) families. In total, they identified 503 cannibalistic events from 299 published papers, with most of them being short communications (42.9%). Full-length articles accounted for 28.2%, while other forms comprised 28.8%.
Interestingly, the Pseudoxyrhophiidae family (Elapidae) had the most recorded cases of cannibalism in Africa, while Viperidae was predominant in the Americas and Colubridae in Asia and Europe.
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The researchers concluded that cannibalism is a widespread behavior among snakes, both in terms of species and geography. It has been recorded on all continents where snakes are found. They also suggested that confinement in enclosures, movement restriction, lack of enrichment, and close proximity to conspecifics may trigger cannibalism among captive snakes. In the wild, factors such as predator abundance, resource availability, and microclimate may contribute to cannibalistic behavior.
The complete paper titled “Occurrence and evolution of cannibal behavior in extant snakes” can be accessed on the Biological Reviews website.
This is fascinating yet slightly terrifying to think about!