Python's digestive workout

摘要

Nothing sets a Burmese python's heart beating quite like settling down to digest a nice meal. Pythons consume their food in a single gulp, which is why their heart rate rockets; digesting an intact meal, skin and all, takes a lot more effort than the finely minced mouthfuls that we swallow. Which made Stephen Secor wonder just how much energy a hungry python has to invest in digestion, before the prey pays back. Secor fed young pythons a range of specially selected ratlike meals and monitored them while their digestive juices got down to business, to find out how much effort it takes a python to get the most from a meal (p. 1621).