The Amazon seed crab (scientific name: Eunectes murinus), the largest grasshopper in the world today, inhabits South America and is as thick as the torso of an adult man. It is water-loving and usually inhabits shallow water on muddy shores, preying on water birds, turtles, capybaras, caimans, tapirs, etc.
The American adventure show really filmed the snake swallowing the living, just swallowing half of the head was stopped. On the evening of December 7, 2014, this program was put on the screen by a channel in the United States. But when Mori opened his blood basin and bit Rossori's head, he sent a distress signal to his assistant, and the process of swallowing alive came to an abrupt end.
Morphological characteristics
Young nymphs are oviparous, sometimes up to seventy or so per litter. Many of the young crabs are eaten by Caiman. They are considered the largest snakes in the world, preferring to live in swamps, shallow streams and still rivers, and are the most hydrophilic giant snakes. The borer is mostly nocturnal, but it is often seen in the sun in broad daylight.
The mouth of the forest borer can be opened up and down to about 180 degrees, 4 rows of teeth can move independently, there is no chin, the 2 rows of teeth in the middle of the upper palate can move up and down, which is conducive to swallowing prey, and its snake skin can be stretched, so it can swallow prey larger than its own size. The tongue of the forest crab is a chemical detector, the scales can sense whether the prey is moving, the eyes are heat sensors, their trachea is at the throat, and when they devour the prey, their trachea is outside, so there is no need to worry about trachea blockage.
Distribution range
It lives only in South America and loves water. Located at the top of the food chain of South American rivers, it preys on capybaras, waterbirds, turtles, and even caimans.
Reproduction and development
The forest grasshopper belongs to the oviparous fetus, which refers to a form of reproduction in which the animal's eggs are fertilized and developed in the body. Although the fertilized egg develops into a new individual in the mother's body, the relationship between the embryo and the mother's structure and physiological function is not close. The nutrition required for embryonic development mainly depends on the absorption of the yolk of the egg itself, and the embryonic body can also exchange some substances with the maternal fallopian tubes. This is the breeding mode formed by the long-term adaptation of animals to adverse environments, and the actual mother mainly plays a protective and hatching role for embryos.
Forest hopper wonderland
In the heart of the Venezuelan wilderness, water and soil mingle to create a unique terrain that has spawned many legendary creatures. For the early explorers who ventured deep into this wild land, nothing was more appalling than the South American giant snake, the forest borer. For centuries, hunters have painted colorful descriptions of this man-eating, 100-meter-long monster, which is hidden behind legends, entangled with swamps and dense forests. Today, biologists venture into the depths of the swamp, and their mission is to uncover the secrets from legend and horror, giving us the opportunity to peek into the hidden lives of the largest giant snake on Earth.
The forest swamp awakens in the first rays of the morning, and the birds answer the call of the rising sun. Swamps account for 1/3 of the entire venezuelan area, and when the rainy season comes, torrential rains continue to pour, water floods the wasteland, and the vast, wet swamps become a paradise for animals. But as the dry season strikes, as the lush grassland turns into a scorched earth in an instant, the creatures of the swamp seize the opportunity to eat and drink as much as they want.
This serene, hearty idyll is about to be interrupted when a hungry snake more than 4 meters long curls up in a hyacinth bush. It was a huge female grasshopper that hadn't eaten rice for months. The dim-eyed but sharp-tongued forest grasshopper smelled rodents from the air, and the eyelidless snake's eyes stared at the "feast"—a capybara that lived by the water. However, the Capybara family did not notice that the forest grasshopper was approaching, and was still playing happily. The mating season has arrived, the female crab urgently needs to fill the hungry intestines to reproduce smoothly, and the female snake will fast immediately after pregnancy until the baby snake is born 7 months later, so it must be eaten. The forest grasshopper struck violently, and a capybara did not have time to escape being captured by the giant snake. The forest grasshopper has always killed by force, not by poison. The big snake coiled and contracted, becoming tighter and tighter, squeezing the capybara's blood unable to circulate, and finally suffocated. At this time, the female snake opens her large mouth and begins to eat slowly: starting from the head of the prey and swallowing slowly. However, the female snake also paid the price for this "big meal": her body was covered with bite marks from the death of the capybara.
There may be other species of snakes in the world that are as long as the forest hopper, but the size is simply not comparable: before swallowing the capybara, the forest hopper was more than 30 centimeters thick. Six hours later, when the capybara was completely swallowed by the forest grasshopper, the giant snake's body proportions were chilling.
Scientists explore
Biologist Harrison is hobbling through the swamp. He has been studying the forest grasshopper since 1992 and has been conducting fieldwork deep into the swamps of Venezuela. Until then, people were almost completely unaware of this sensitive and dangerous creature. In 1996, Harrison's wife, wildlife scientist Orini, also joined the hunt for the giant snake. The couple captured and recorded nearly 800 bushhoppers and named most of them. In their opinion, the forest grasshopper is the overlord of this swamp, and no creature can fight them here. Harrison and Orini are most interested in the breeding of the borer, so they must put as many radio transmitters as they can into the borer before the mating season. Forcing these giant snakes to swallow these radio devices may seem inhumane, but they will only feel a little uncomfortable, after all, they can swallow slightly shorter humans effortlessly.
In order to catch the forest grasshopper, you must use all kinds of means, they are very slippery, often people feel that they are not strong enough, there is no place to start. So Harrison and Euryni would often ride on the body of the giant snake and press them with their bodies, only in this way could they be fixed to a fixed point. The work is both risky and exciting, but once they succeed in capturing a forest crab, they are one step closer to the mysterious love world of these giant snakes.
The vast swamp is the couple's natural laboratory. But the area to be searched was so vast that Harrison relied on satellites to track the foresthoppers equipped with radio transmitters from the air. At first, the female forest hopper that swallowed the capybara, Harrison called it Diyago. The warm sunlight accelerated the process of DiYage's digestion, and its whole body was swollen, its body was filled with gas, and its entire body floated on the surface of the water. Harrison closely monitored Diya's movements and waited for it to regain its form before arresting it. After a full meal, the forest grasshopper will stand still and wait for digestion. The swamp seemed to have returned to its former calm.
Two weeks after Diyago digested the feast, the Harrisons' arrest plan began. Fortunately, this time, DiYago was a little tired after the feast, and only wanted to escape and did not want to attack, so Harrison did not have to go too far to capture it, and Euryni put her socks around its head and then brought it back to the residence. For the Harrisons, who were used to being with snakes, they numbered each snake they caught and drew a tail pattern as a fingerprint mark for the bushhopper. The job is much easier than wrestling with snakes in the wilderness, but what is unbearable is the fishy smell of this behemoth. The forest grasshopper has a sweat gland on its body, and its smell is equivalent to the stench of animal rotting corpses that have been left for 5 days. At most, the Harrisons lived in captivity with dozens of giant snakes, which was really smelly.
DiYage is more than 4 meters long, it is indeed a big snake, but it is definitely not the longest. No one knows exactly how long the silkworm will grow.
After registering and placing the launcher, Diyago was released back into the swamp. The Harrisons bid it a temporary farewell and hoped it would reproduce smoothly. By this time the dry season had arrived, and the swamp was steaming. On the remaining waterways, the animals almost squeezed their heads. In the afternoon dusk, there are forest hoppers everywhere taking advantage of the cool temperature to chase the fading ponds. And those cool, damp caves are available for the bushhopper to survive the last weeks of the dry season. [1]
Cannibalism incident
Forest hopper
Although the cannibalism of the forest hopper has never been confirmed, people who disappeared in the swamp are often thought to have been buried in the belly of a snake. Even experienced experts have been attacked by giant snakes. The teeth of the forest grasshopper are bent backwards, and once entangled with the forest grasshopper, you simply cannot expect to be able to untie it with your hands. If your hands or feet are bitten by these big guys, you must restrain your instinct to pull your hands and feet out of the mouth of the giant snake, otherwise the injury will be more serious.