Python dislocates jaw and slowly devours house cat in Brisbane backyard
WARNING GRAPHIC: A python wrapped its slithering body around a house cat before dislocating its jaw to slowly engulf its prey in a confronting video released by a Queensland snake catcher.
Janne Torkkola, 28, is the owner of Snake Out Brisbane and was called to a Brisbane home at 6:30am on Tuesday to attend to a snake devouring an object.
"We received a concerned from a client who said they had a large snake eating something in their backyard," Mr Torkkola told Yahoo7.
The zoologist arrived at the Sunny Bank home 20 minutes later to find the snake had already devoured the neighbour's cats' head.
"By the time we got there the snake had already constricted the cat and was just starting to consume the head," he said.
Mr Torkkola said he left with a co-worker to get a coffee from down the road - after establishing the snake wouldn't be able to move for a while- and sat with the clients to watch nature take its place.
"There wasn't much we could do at that point," he said.
In the video, the python continues to ferociously expand its dislocated jaw around the grey and white cat, allowing the elastic skin to stretch over the prey.
The snakes body rises up and its skin stretches as it continues to gobble down the cat.
"We’re on the home stretch now," Mr Torkkola can be heard saying in the video adding that this is a reason to keep your cats enclosed at night.
Within minutes the snake devoured the house pet and the pet's feet are seen perched in its mouth for sometime, before the reptile completely engulfs those also.
The zoologist told Yahoo that the whole process would of taken the snake about an hour and a half altogether.
"We waited for him to finish swallowing to bag him up," Mr Torkkola said.
"If we were to try and catch him while he was eating he would of just regurgitated it.
"Then you would have a mucus covered, lifeless cat," he said adding at least one of our native wildlife was able to eat.
The snake catcher said he and his co-worker found a suitable habitat with shelter which was along a creekline.
Here he was able to digest its prey, which may take a few weeks to a month.
Mr Torkkola has been in the wildlife industry for five years and told Yahoo7 how these predators are able to eat an animal triple its size.
He said the python is a macrostoma and have the ability to dislocate their jaw to be able to eat larger prey.
Mr Torkkola explained that the snake strangles its prey by coiling and looping itself around it.
Once the animal has stopped moving, the snake dislocates its bottom jaw from the back and also dislocates the middle of the front jaw.
This allowed both sides of the bottom jaw to move in separate directions.
He said the snake's trachea extends outside of the tongue so the reptile is able to breathe while its mouth is full of its prey.
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