On a recent trip to Puerto Rico, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon an Alsophis portoricensis eating an adult male Anolis cristatellus. I was immediately reminded of Yoel’s post about A. sagrei and a black racer, and decided to set up my video camera. The entire event took about seventeen minutes, but sadly I missed the most interesting part – the capture. For those of you who don’t want to sit through the ten-minute clip, I recommend checking out the 3:50 mark [where the anole has his dewlap extended] and the last 30 seconds or so [to see both an interesting witness to the feeding event and the snake’s attempt to climb the tree after completing its meal].
Hungry for more information on Alsophis feeding behavior, particularly as it relates to anoles? Check out the work by Javier Rodríguez-Robles, Manuel Leal, & Richard Thomas, over at Javier’s home-page here.
- Name That Anole (x2)! - February 26, 2011
- Anolis Predation, Again - February 17, 2011
Mike
Very neat video!
I administer a flickr group that contains lots of photos and some video of snakes capturing and consuming prey in nature. Please consider adding your video to the group:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/snakes_eating/