sorry, but I moved the photos here
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/116596295911876458065/albums/5939532502008635073
Hi,
this morning I went back to Hagieni forest, some of you may have read last week`s report http://fieldherping.eu/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1700.
Today we left at 8 am too and the weather was great, just like last week. Clear skies, warm air, no wind, everything just fine.
We started the quest near the swamp and moved along it until the terrain started to change.
We encountered the usual wildlife:
Does anyone have any idea if this belonged to a domestic pig or a wild boar? It sure had tusks...
Funny looking mushrooms.
We also found a cave I knew existed, but I had never visited it. Quite a few large bats inside, photos not very good.
I kept the most interesting thing for the end. At first I was very excited of the finding and eager to present it to you, but now I`m not so sure.
We were walking along the edge of the forest and my friend suddenly called me and said the found the entrance of the cave. The vegetation was thick so I turned back to find a way to get to him. As I was starting my descent ( I was in a high area, with lots of limestone around), I came upon this:
You can`t really tell, but it was a baby ammodytes, perhaps 15 to 20 cm in length. It looked very young, possibly born this autumn? Anyway, I saw the distinctive marking and stopped, immediately called my friend who arrived quickly, ready to "shoot". I was already taking photos. At first I didn`t even realise what we had there, but I knew it was something "big" when we saw that it was trying to eat the centipede, which was clearly dead. I`m not sure if the little viper had killed it, the centipede would have been a very powerful adversary. I have some questions at this point, for you snake experts: would the venom of the young viper have been strong enough to kill the centipede? Let`s say it was already dead when the viper found it, are vipers scavengers?
Anyway, we took some photos and decided to leave, as the viper released the centipede from it`s jaws and started to retreat. Knowing that it was soon going to hibernate, we didn`t want to deprive it from such a meal. And what a victory for the little guy, if there was indeed a fight! So we left and hoped the little viper would continue to eat the centipede; we didn`t return later, so I don`t know what happened in the end. We decided not to return because - and this may seem naive - we had seen youtube movies of anaconda regurgitating giant prey when stressed, so we didn`t want to put the viper in a similar situation.
When I returned home, I googled viper centipede and found this:
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/12/03/small-snake-vs-big-centipede/
If you don`t want to bother following the link, it says that a 19,5 cm viper ate a 14 cm centipede. There`s a photo, and the two look just like what I saw today, about the same size for both of them. The viper died after eating such a large meal. If you read the comments, there`s a guy saying that snakes are able to regurgitate if the meal turns out to be too big, but in this case the spikes of the centipede prevented that, so the snake died. The thing is that the snake was alive when the scientist caught it and died an hour later, which makes me think that having been caught may have been a major cause of death, perhaps it did try to regurgitate under stress and then the problems started, maybe it could have digested the centipede if the scientist hadn`t messed with it. Who knows...
I think i`ll return there next week, there`s a slight chance to meet the young viper again. I just hope he had indeed killed the centipede, ate it after we left and will have no problems digesting it.