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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.

Wow, what an interesting observation! One doesn't come upon scenes like this very often, so you were quite lucky I think.

That's a dangerous oponent and quite a big meal for the young viper indeed. I'll let the experts give you more comprahensive answers to your questions but as for this one:

would the venom of the young viper have been strong enough to kill the centipede?

The venom of young vipers (and probably all venomous snakes?) is just as strong as the venom of adults, just a smaller quantity. Having in mind that ammodytes has one of the most potent venoms of all European species, I definitely think it won't have a problem killing a centipede, or even something bigger. It's not unusual for baby vipers to feed on invertebrates, so chances are that this little guy did kill the centipede itself. I'm not sure if it would've been able to eat it though....I'd like to hear other opinions on this as well.

Very interesting set of pictures! So I agree with Ilian on the fact the venom of young specimens is as strong (if not more) as the one of adults. It could also be precised that even if the venom is really effective on mammals,in the sense that it can kill a prey in quite a short time, it's a different story when it is injected into insects. From what I could observe so far, I would expect the venom to take much more time to neutralize such an insect. To come back to your question, I also think that it is possible that the viper killed the centipede itself , but it should have been an intensive fighting considering the usual aggressive behavior of those insects. It's a bit risky for the viper to prey on those animals!

"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"

This is true, but sometimes additional problems emerge...I learned it the hard way with one of my young snakes which had eaten a big mouse (the latter was offered for another snake in the same terrarium). When I came back home few hours later, I discovered the little snake died, with half of the mouse outside its mouth. In my case, I suppose that the snake has suffocated during this exhausting process.

In a forest I found a small Vipera aspis hugyi who was choked to death trying to swallow a big Podarcis sicula....

lot of young venemous or not snakes eat insects.

Interesting! Thanks for posting.

Cool observation, in any case!

Pierre-Yves Vaucher wrote:lot of young venemous or not snakes eat insects.

Are you implying that centipedes are insects?

Rana temporaria vs Vipera berus
http://magazynkaszuby.pl/2016/06/zmija- ... ozyteczna/