Jul 16, 2006 3:33 pm US/Central
CBS 2 At Brookfield Zoo: Indigo Snake
BROOKFIELD, Ill. (CBS) ―
How close are you willing to get to a snake? A lot of people would not touch one.
But recently at Brookfield Zoo, CBS 2's Susan Carlson and zoo Public Program Coordinator Andre Copeland got up close and personal with an indigo snake.
SC: "You say he's not poisonous, Andre."
AC: "No, he's a non-venomous snake, and actually the largest non-venomous snake in North America."
SC: "But nonetheless, he's a danger to some mammals. Describe his method of eating mammals."
AC: "Well, as most snakes do, he's going to eat anything that he can swallow whole. And indigo snakes have a wide variety of animals they will eat. They will eat small mammals, they will eat small amphibians such as frogs, they will even eat small birds, but uncharacteristically of most snakes, they will even at times eat small turtles. Now, the indigo snake does something that the king snakes do too – they will actually eat venomous snakes."
SC: "So he eats other reptiles. That's very unusual."
AC: "But the unique thing about the indigo snake's eating habits is that he will only immobilize his prey. They have extremely powerful jaws. They grab unto what they want to eat, then they use their powerful bodies to pin their prey to the ground, and then unfortunately for the prey, they start to swallow it alive."
SC: "Boy, that does sound pleasant. Now, he keeps moving his tail like he doesn't want me to hold onto him. Is he saying let go? What's he trying to communicate?"
AC: "He's just trying to move and explore in his environment right now. So he realizes that I'm something warm. He realizes that I'm not something that he can eat because I'm too big to swallow. But he's obviously feeling confident that, 'Well, Andre doesn't want to eat me,' because if he thought I was a potential threat, he would actually flatten out his neck much the same way tiger snakes do in Australia, hiss very loudly, and then start to vibrate his tail very rapidly to try to mimic the sounds of a rattlesnake."
SC: "Wow, that would be enough to scare me away. Sounds like a smart guy. Where can we find them?"
AC: "Come to Brookfield Zoo, to Feathers and Scales, and you can see Corey, the indigo snake here."
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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