Nutrition

Beaked sea snakes mainly feed on catfish and sometimes on puffer fishes. They are also known to feed on other fishes, crustaceans, and squids too. In spite that, they prefer and their diet is mainly on catfish. They hunt down their prey by unique technique, in which they would hunt their prey by touching and detecting their movement rather than relaying on their vision.  This allows them to feed during night and when their is low visibility.  They tend to actively feed at night though.

    Since they are equipped with very powerful venom, beaked sea snake first attack their prey with their venom. Then the snake swallows its prey live.  It's been shown that their is a relationship between the size of prey compared to the size of the snout-vent of the snake.  This relationship shows that snakes with larger snout-vent tend to prey on larger organisms than snakes with smaller snout vent.

    Like all snakes, after digestion takes place, the beaked sea snake becomes dormant while it digest the organism. Since it's cold blooded, the surrounding temperature plays a key role in digestion.  The sea snake's ideal temperature during digestion is 30 degrees Celsius ( 86 F). The snakes digestive enzymes absorb everything except for bones and any claws, which are excreted as waste. Since the snake has a closed circulatory system, the nutrients are sent throughout its body.

 

 

 

 

 

Learn how they Reproduce.

 

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