Boa Gulps Down Companion as Both Are Endeavoring to Feast on the Same Live Pigeon.
    A snake’s method of swallowing is almost automatic; the internal mechanism begins its work as soon as the reptile takes the food into its mouth. In his book, “Of Distinguished Animals,” Mr. H. Perry Robinson relates an extraordinary incident that occurred a few years ago at the London zoological gardens.
    The attandants put some pigeons into a cage occupied by two boas, one ten feet long, the other a foot shorter. In the night the larger snake seized a pigeon, and his mate unfortunately selected the same bird. The tip of the smaller boa’s nose was drawn into the nouth of the other together with the pigeon, and after it the rest of the snake continued to go, although the eater must have been surprised at the almost intolerable length of what it had believed to be an ordinary pigeon.
    The next morning only one of the snakes was visible. Its enormously distended body no longer had the power of coiling, but remained stretched to its full length in a straight line, and appeared to be at least three times its normal circumference. It was almost painful to see the tightened skin, which had separated the scales all over the middle of the body. Twenty-eight days later the snake had not only digested its companion, but had regained its appetite as well as its normal size, and it immediately swallowed a pigeon put into its den.
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