A video of a snake giving birth is going viral, with millions of people watching as a baby slimes its way out of the mama reptile.
The group Reptile Collective shared the video on Facebook a recently. It shows two baby sand boas coming out of a hole at the end of a larger snake, but one of the infants is slowly squeezing out of its mom in a curl or a loop — as opposed to exiting her body in a single thread.
Other snakes which had recently been birthed themselves are lying around behind this action, even pressing up against the newborn.
Almost immediately after the last new snake comes out, it moves its head around and quickly sticks out its tongue.
The baby is followed out of its mother by a membranous string.
“Always cool to witness live birth,” Reptile Collective wrote in the video post.
The group also later shared a photo of six snakes with different colorings, saying, “All the babies made it.”
In addition to the pink snake with orange markings and the dark gray one with orange markings that emerge from their mother during the video, in the container of the newborns there was an orange-brown snake and three darker-colored ones, including a baby with markings reminiscent of a panther.
Boas are a group of non-venomous, constricting snakes. Sand boas belong to a subfamily called Erycinae — which includes snakes from across Asia, Africa and North America — that give birth to live young instead of laying eggs that later hatch.
Although boa constrictors are a species related to sand boas, they are in a different subfamily, called Boinae, along with anacondas.
Boa constrictors are arguably the most famous of the boas, and do not have the best reputation. Just recently a woman in Ohio called police and firefighters when a boa constrictor repeatedly bit her face and then wrapped itself around her neck. Emergency responders found her lying in her driveway and cut off the snake’s head with a pocket knife to save her.
If you didn’t know snakes can give birth just like humans do, don’t let that fact shake your entire worldview; although some snakes do give birth like the sand boa in this video, about 70 percent of snakes lay eggs, according to National Geographic. Usually the ones that lay eggs live in warmer climates where their eggs will incubate on warmer ground, while the ones who birth live young usually live in colder areas.
Snakes that lay eggs are called oviparous and the remaining 30 percent that give birth are called viviparous snakes.
Reptile Collective recently shared a video of ball pythons hatching as well.
“Sand boas are amazing animals that stay small and [are] generally very tractable and tolerant of us humans,” Reptile Collective explained.
They usually eat rodents but have been known to much on lizards or birds as well.
.By International Business Times