Pythons are largely ambush hunters and they feed on vertebrate prey. Pythons find active way of foraging. The bulk of small python’s diet is composed of lizards. However as the size of the python increases, it begins to rely more on mammals for consumption. While they do not often consume birds pythons are known to feed on birds when the opportunity is there to seize. Though rarely pythons also eat snakes; Antaresia, Aspidites, Apodora, and Bothrochilus are species that are known to consume snakes.
What Do Pythons Eat
All pythons are non-venomous carnivores as they kill their prey by constriction. The prey is killed by cardiac arrest and not by crushing.
Pythons rarely attack humans unless provoked. However, records show that three of the largest python species attack on humans in the eighteenth century. Such predation is fairly unusual even though reticulated pythons, African pythons and Indian pythons are quite capable to take down prey as big as humans are.
They do not have to eat too often and once a sizeable prey is swallowed it’d be least likely to eat in near future. That is to say that pythons can live for several weeks without eating anything.
Pythons like to eat warm-blooded prey and they also consume crocodiles and iguanas. Fish, turtles, and snakes also form the essential part of their diet.
Indian and Burmese pythons are known to eat primates, porcupines, flying foxes, and leopards. Similarly other big constrictors also devour a broad range of prey.
Burmese pythons living in the southern Florida are apt to eat a diverse range of animals. According to an estimate, these giant constrictors consume almost three dozens of native vertebrates in Florida. These include herons, deer, bobcats, wrens, raccoons, egrets, and alligators.
Florida pythons also take down endangered species such as Key Largo woodrat and wood stork.
They also eat round-tailed muskrats, white ibis, and limpkins. In fact, Burmese pythons are primarily responsible for reducing the populations of medium sized mammals like round-tailed muskrats, marsh rabbits, and raccoons.
In the Everglades National Park (U.S.) Burmese pythons are fond of eating any sizeable bird or mammal and occasionally a reptile.
A scrub python hunts in the early hours of sunset or simply at night. Thanks to its large golden eyes with the help of which it visualizes almost anything in the dim light. It does not seem to have any enemy and is known to hunt kangaroos and wallabies. However, smaller prey makes the major portion of the diet.
Scrub pythons consume rats, fruit bats, possums, and chickens along with the pademelon (kind of a small kangaroo).
African rock python feeds on a good many number of rodents, antelopes, warthogs, fruit bats, crocodiles, and even monitor lizards in the forests.