A photo shows a horrific moment as a snake eel dangles out of a heron’s stomach in midair.
The picture reminded everyone of a movie named “Alien.”
A photographer in Delaware clicked a photo, which seems exceptionally rare. The snake eel struggled for its life and managed to pull out its body from the stomach of a heron. The bird engulfed the snake eel as a whole, and it was very unlike to see the gutsy move from the prey who dangles out of the stomach. Sam Devis snapped this moment and got the attention of millions.
Snake eels are known for performing daring escapes. They can easily find a way of burrowing out of their predator’s stomach by their sharp tail.
The pointed tips of snake eels are usually used for digging purposes, but it also helps them when a predator swallows them wholly. However, the experts said this alien move caught in the picture is not usual.
John Pogonoski, an Australian ichthyologist, said this is very strange, and I’ve not witnessed any such behavior in birds.
Sam Davis, who is 58-year-old and an engineer by profession, is from Maryland. Davis said he was about 90 meters away from the two animals. “It looks as the snake eel was biting the bird’s neck. I saw the heron flying and eventually diving in water with the eel attached to it,” said David.
David also said that both the animals were alive at the moment he saw them in the air. He captured the moment from a telephoto lens that is used for long-distant photography. David said he found it later while editing the photo that the eel was coming out of heron’s stomach.
A research study on snake eels in earlier 2020 elaborated on how they have the ability to escape out of the gut of their predator’s digestive tract, but they don’t end up skipping alive. A co-author shared his experience and wrote that he found a live eel inside the fish’s stomach while he was cleaning a fish to eat.
There’s no confirmation that whether the eel and heron survived after they dived in water or were dead.