Pythons are famous for their eating habits. After choking their prey with their bed bodies, these large snakes swallow the animal. Now researchers have thrown a new light on the cellular mechanisms that allow them to digest whole skeletons.
The study, presented on July 9 at the annual Conference of Society for Experimental Biology in Belgium and issued In the journal for experimental biology, explored the intestinal cells of Burmese pythons. Adult males can grow up to 10 to 16 feet (3 to 5 meters) long, and their impressive size allows them Nutri A wide variety of mammals and birds, including deer and alligators. Unlike other carnivores who eat only meat, snakes depend on animal skeletons such as calcium source. By absorbing all the available calcium from a skeleton, however, could result in too much of this food entering the blood flow of the snake. Called hyperkalchemia, it can lead To heart conditions, high blood pressure, bone defects and kidney failure in reptiles.
“We wanted to identify as [pythons] was able to process and limit this huge absorption of calcium through the intestinal wall, “said Jehan-Hervé Lakot, chief author and professor at the University of Montpellier, in Statement.
To this end, Woodot and his colleagues fed Pythons one of three different diets: normal rats, bone rats, or involuntary rats enriched by calcium carbonate to match natural bone calcium levels. One group of snakes did not receive any of these diets and instead fasted for three weeks to provide a baseline. Three to six days after nutrition, the researchers humanely euthanized and separated the snakes to extract their small intestines.
They then analyzed the enterocytes, or intestinal coating cells, of the pythons with light and electron microscopes along with blood measurements and hormonal levels. This has revealed never before seen a cell, which produces large items made of calcium, phosphorus and iron. These particles form structures that linot calls “spheres.”
“Morphological analysis of the epithelium of Python revealed specific items that I have never seen in other vertebrates,” Wood said. He and his colleagues found these items in the inner “crypt” – a small pocket or cavity – from special cells that differed from traditional intestinal cells. “Unlike normal absorbent enterocites, these cells are very narrow, have short microvisions [finger-like membrane protrusions]and has an apical fold that forms a crypt, “he added.
The three different diets that the Pythons ate, allowed the researchers to evaluate the function of these unique cells. In snakes that ate deserted prey, the enterocytes did not produce the rich particles of calcium and phosphorus. In those who ate either whole rodents or calcium-supplemented nuanced rodents, yet the cryptos of the cells filled with large elements of calcium, phosphorus and iron. This suggests that these cells play an important role in destroying the bones of Python’s prey. The researchers found no bones in the shirts of the snakes, confirming that all skeletons were completely digested and dissolved in their bodies.
Although it was first identified in Burmese pythons, this new cell type is not unique to them. Since that initial discovery, the researchers have found these special bone digestive cells in other species of pythons, boa and gila monster, a kind of poisonous lizard originating from the southwestern United States and Mexico.
The findings seem to note an underestimated system of mineral regulation in the digestive paths of reptiles. However, it is possible that this mechanism extends to other types of bone-eating carnivores, such as sharks and other marine predators, water mammals or birds of prey such as the bearded vulture, according to a wooden. He told Gizmodo that he hopes this work would inspire other researchers to look for these newly discovered cells through the animal kingdom.
