In Indonesia, a mouse appeared to be pleading for help as it was suffocated by a 3ft-long python before being devoured whole, arms outstretched and mouth wide. Dzul Dzulfikri, a 48-year-old reptile owner from Indonesia, took the photos earlier this year while feeding a live rat to his pet. Dzulfikri put the mouse in the python’s cage and then grabbed his camera as the predator struck its prey, encircling it in its tail and crushing it to death over a five-minute period.
While pythons may be trained to eat frozen mice, the majority of them prefer to eat live prey that they have killed themselves, which is why Dzulfikri fed his pet with live food. ‘While I was ecstatic to have these photographs, I felt awful for the mouse as I watched it struggle in its final moments,’ he stated. During a feeding session earlier this year, Dzul Dzulfikri, an Indonesian python owner, captured this image of a mouse appearing to cry for help as it was strangled to death by his pet snake.
Dzulfikri said he put the live mouse in his python’s cage and then grabbed his camera to record the seconds when the snake struck and squeezed its prey to death. The python consumed the mouse entire after killing it. By unhinging their jaws, most snakes can finish their food in one sitting and won’t need to eat for weeks, if not months. While captive pythons may be trained to eat frozen mice, their natural diet consists of freshly killed prey, thus even if kept as pets, they will need to be given live prey.
