Snakes have to open their mouths wide to swallow their prey whole because they don’t have the kind of teeth that can chew. If it’s been five days since you last fed your snake, your snake is yawning because it wants to eat. The ideal environmental temperature ranges from 82° to 86☏. If you haven’t delivered a meal, it may be that your snake is trying to tell you something by yawning: I’m hungry! Feed me!Ī snake will usually need three to five days to digest their food, depending on the temperature of their body, which changes in relation to their environment. If you’ve just dropped food into your snake’s habitat, and you see your snake opening its mouth, it’s getting ready to swallow its dinner. Snakes Open Their Mouths Before and After Eating In some cases, a snake will open its mouth wide because it’s having trouble breathing through its nose. Snakes may open their mouths and flick out their tongue to take in chemical particles of scent that give them information about their surrounding environment. #2 They use their mouths to get information on their surroundings Just like a warm-up stretching exercise before the real deal.Īfter they eat or swallow their prey whole, they also have to “yawn” to realign their jaw. Snakes do not have the kind of teeth necessary to chew, they have to open their mouths wide to take in their prey whole.īefore they eat, they need to get ready their jaw. #1 To realign their lower jaw after eating or as a warm-up before eating. There are three reasons why they open their mouths. For example, fish yawn to clear the water from their gills, or in some cases, as a show of aggression. What makes yawning even more confusing is that different species apparently yawn for different reasons. But snakes are cold-blooded animals, so they would not yawn for this same reason. Humans are warm-blooded, so it makes sense that we may yawn when we’re too warm to cool down our blood. If this theory is correct, it illustrates why snakes do not yawn when they’re tired. The most recent theory is that yawning increases blood flow while at the same time cooling the blood with air that is a lower temperature than the body’s temperature. There are several theories regarding the human yawn.
In order to understand the reasons snakes open their mouths to yawn or mouth gaping, it helps to understand what a yawn is - in terms of humans and other species. Understanding snake yawning or mouth gaping These ligaments stretch to allow snakes to open their mouths extraordinarily wide to swallow animals as large as a goat or an alligator (in the case of a python). Snakes can open their mouths wide because their jaws are two separate pieces of bone that are only attached by stretchy ligaments that hold the lower jaw in place. Some people mistakenly believe that snakes can unhinge their jaws, but that’s not what’s happening. Think about that: 180 degrees equals a straight line! There’s a good reason that nature designed snakes’ mouths to open wide: their jaw must be able to swallow their prey whole. You’ve probably noticed that snakes can open their mouth really wide - up to a 150-degree angle. Fun fact: How Wide Can a Snake’s Mouth Open? We will elaborate more below on the reasons for yawning in cold blooded creatures like the snake.īut before that let’s look at. It’s important to figure out why your snake is yawning because if your snake is sick, the sooner you recognize the symptoms, the greater the chance that you may save your pet’s life. Or they can also yawn because they are feeling ill.They yawn when they are picking up chemicals in the air that provide information about the environment.They yawn when they are getting ready to eat, or after eating, they are realigning their jaw.When snakes open mouths to yawn, it can mean many things but definitely not because they are tired. But really, do snake yawn? and what do they mean? Are they tired? Did you notice how some times you see your pet snake mouth opens really wide? It can look like they are yawning.
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