14 DAY TRIAL // As it turns out, it's not just a dog-eat-dog world we're living in. It's also a snake-eat-snake world. Literally. The good news is that, every once in a while, the ones that get eaten manage to save themselves with a little help from their friends.
Not to beat about the bush, word has it that, some time ago, a teeny tiny snake that got eaten by another, bigger one escaped and crawled to freedom after its predator was slaughtered by a cat.
That's right, the little fellow simply worked its way out of the predatory snake's stomach after the big, nasty reptile had a close encounter with one seriously courageous pet cat that pounced on it, sunk its claws and teeth deep in its flesh and, well, killed it.
How the cat killed the snake that ate a fellow reptile
It is understood that this bizarre incident played out in the island of Corfu in Greece back in 2011 and was witnessed by a man named Dick Mulder and his wife, who even managed to snap a few photos of the little snake crawling out of its predator.
The reason why this story is just now making headlines is because it was only a few weeks ago that Dick Mulder and his wife contacted Andrew Gray, curator of herpetology at Manchester Museum in the UK, and shared the photos they took back in 2011 with him.
The man says that, on the day of the snake's daring cat-assisted escape, he and his wife were just minding their own business when they found a four-lined snake slithering around their home. Dick Mulder tried to take some photos of it but, before he got his camera, their pet cat killed it.
Since dead snakes are no fun to photograph, Dick Mulder abandoned his initial plans and made new ones about how to dispose of the reptile's body. The thing is that, despite having been killed by the cat, the four-lined snake soon enough started moving again.
Much to their surprise, Dick Mulder and his wife noticed one another, smaller snake crawling out of its mouth. Having escaped the belly of its would-be killer, this other reptile, identified as a Dahl's whip snake, eventually found its way back to the wild.
The little snake was one really lucky fellow
Andrew Gray says that the only reasonable explanation for this incident is that the four-lined snake ate the smaller reptile just minutes before being killed by Dick Mulder's and his wife's pet cat. Otherwise put, the big snake must not have had enough time to even begin digesting its meal.
What's more, the only way that the smaller snake could have escaped the belly of its predator was if got eaten starting from its tail. Had the four-lined snake consumed its prey's head first, there is no way that the Dahl's whip snake could have crawled to freedom after the death of its predator.
