Snakes are a far more diverse group than they might appear, to human eyes at least. The 4,000 or so snake species feed variously on mammals, birds, eggs, lizards, fish, snails, worms and insects.
Do snakes eat each other?
Many, including Europe’s smooth snake, will happily eat other snakes, given the opportunity. And some – the kingsnakes of North America, for example, or Asia’s king cobra – are full-blown ophiophage specialising in serpentine prey.
But this couldn’t really be called cannibalism, in the same way that a lion eating a fellow mammal couldn’t. True cannibalism – killing and eating a member of one’s own species – is rather rare throughout the animal kingdom. Some snakes, though, do meet this standard, if only occasionally.
Are some snakes cannibalistic?
An internet search will yield videos of black-headed pythons, copperheads and small-eyed snakes all making a meal of one of their own. Male Cape cobras have been documented eating rivals, and male king cobras eating females, while in the south of France, male Montpellier snakes eat the females outside of the mating season.
There are also intriguing cases of captive snakes swallowing their own tails, ouroboros-style, presumably in mistake for prey, which could be regarded as an extreme form of cannibalism. However, it’s not clear whether this occurs in nature.