An amateur photographer in Delaware, Sam Davis, captured a rather shocking picture of a heron flying through the air, dragging a long strip, the telephoto lens closer, Sam Davis was afraid to realize that it was actually a snake eel was perforated from the heron!

How can a snake eel burrow out of a heron's body after it's been swallowed? Isn't this the legendary creature from Alien? How terrifying is this animal?

The snake eel and the true history of its infamous creature!

The snake eel is a shallow bottom fish that is widely distributed in the western Atlantic Ocean and resembles a snake by name. The snake eel has a long snake-like body that can reach up to 2 meters in length, and likes to hide in the sand and mud, making it a ferocious carnivorous fish! Despite its poor looks, the snake eel is a rare economic fish with tender meat, high fat content, delicate texture and delicious flavor.

Snake eels that can escape from holes in their prey

The snake eel's habit is to hide on the bottom of the shallow sea, then lurk in the sand and mud, with one head exposed, striking out quickly to hunt when there is prey, and retreating back into its hole quickly to hide when there is a threat, and that burrow it relies on for survival is dug out by the rapid churning of its dagger-like tail!

So when it is too late to avoid being swallowed by other predators, generally will repeat the same trick, also like living on the sea floor, began to play a hole to avoid the threat, this hit but let swallowed it's predator pain a lot, never encountered such a prey ah, actually intend to run out from the body to dig a hole!

But the snake eel has no sense of direction when it makes a hole in the body of its natural enemy, it doesn't know where the outside is, so it arches all over the place, if it reaches the outside of its body before it dies, then it counts its luck, if it hits the wrong direction, and it dies of lack of oxygen before it comes out, then I'm sorry to say that the body of its natural enemy becomes its grave!

One of the black sea bream is notorious for finding more "mummies" wrapped in petrified snake eels in their bodies, and researchers found petrified snake eels in 19 out of 335 black sea bream specimens! It's a self-protection technique by which the organism proliferates large amounts of tissue to encase the foreign object and prevent it from infecting other organs!

Of course we don't know how many snake eels got out of the black snapper, after all, no black snapper has ever been caught with a wound on its body, so I guess it's a good bet that the black snapper would have hung up after such a tussle!

How did the snake eel escape from the heron? Will the unlucky heron survive?

The heron doesn't know where it caught the snake eel, which is a benthic fish that rarely comes to shore! The heron was so unlucky that it swallowed a snake eel, which has the skills to kill people!

The heron's body is the snake eel has never experienced, because the shallow bottom of the sea water temperature is hardly more than 30 degrees, so the heron's body is almost 42 degrees of the environment is the warmth of the embrace that it has never experienced in its life, but the snake eel instinctively feel that this is not a place to stay! So the snake eel began another round of escape!

Luckily this time it found a relatively weak neck and abdomen junction, this is the weakest position of the bird, so the snake eel ran out, stretched out his head and looked around, and found that actually came to the sky, from the bottom of the sea to the sky, incomparable magical experience, I guess the earth is only this snake eel, so it went back to other snake eels to listen to the snake eel, I guess it will be treated as a psychopath! Just like we treat people who have been on UFOs as monsters, haha!

Is this heron still alive?

If that snake eel still remains in the heron, I guess the probability of the heron surviving is lower, after all, such a big snake eel to be wrapped in the body of the petrified is not an easy thing, it is easy to get infected!

And after the snake eel escaped from the heron's body is left with the question of whether this wound is large, whether it has injured any important organs, whether there is hemorrhage, etc. However, from the view of the heron that was still flying when Sam Davis took the picture and left, it seems that there is no major problem except for a hole, but the next wound in the digestive tract will not leak out the food, which will continue to lead to a serious infection is a debatable issue!

Clearly seen to still be alive

I hope the heron is OK, and if it survives, I'm guessing that next time it will be beating it to death rather than eating this horrible animal!