Pythons are notorious for their food habits. After the suffocation of their hunting with their bodies, these big snakes swallow the entire animal. Now, researchers have shed new lights on the cellular system that allow them to digest the entire skeletons.
The study, on July 9, was presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Belgium and Published In the Journal of Experimental Biology, the Burmese dragon examined the intestinal cells. Adult men may be 10 to 16 feet (3 to 5 meters) long, and their impressive size allows them to allow them Increase A wide variety of mammals and birds including deer and crocodile. Unlike other non -vegetarians who eat only meat, snakes rely on the animal skeleton as calcium source. Absorbing all available calcium from a skeleton, however, can enter the bloodstream of the snake as a result of this nutrient. Called Hyperchalasimia, it can do it lead Kidney failure in heart condition, high blood pressure, bone defects and reptiles.
“We wanted to identify how (Python) was able to process and limit this huge absorption of calcium through the intestinal wall,” a professor at Montpelier University, Jehan-Harve Lignaut said, a professor in A. statement,
By that end, lignots and their colleagues fed the python one of the three separate diets: normal mice, boneless mice, or boneless mice were enriched with calcium carbonate to match the level of natural bone calcium. A group of snakes did not get any of these diets and instead fasted for three weeks to provide an base line. After three to six days, the researchers humanically ejected and dissected snakes to remove their small intestines.
They then analyzed the enterocytes of the python, or intestinal lining cells using light and electron microscope with the measurement of blood calcium and hormone levels. It has never been detected by a cell that produces large particles made of calcium, phosphorus and iron. These particles form structures that call lygnott “sfeeroids”.
“A morphological analysis of the python epithelium revealed specific particles that I had never seen in another vertebrae,” Lignaut said. He and his colleagues found these particles inside the internal “crypt” -a small pocket or cavity, which were different from traditional intestinal cells for special cells. He said, “Unlike normal absorbed enterocytes, these cells are very narrow, it contains short microvili (finger -like membrane protrusions), and there is an epic fold that makes a crypt,” he said.
Three separate diets that the python ate allowed researchers to assess the function of these unique cells. The boneless prey eaten in snakes, enterocytes did not produce calcium and phosphorus-rich particles. Among those who ate either the entire rodents or calcium-east boneless rodents, however, cells filled with calcium, phosphorus and large iron particles of the cells. This suggests that these cells play an important role in breaking the bones of hunting of python. Researchers found no bones in snakes, confirming that all the skeletons were completely digested and dissolved inside their body.
Although it was first identified in the Burmese Python, this new cell type is not unique to them. Since that initial discovery, researchers have found these particular bones digested cells in a species of toxic lizards for Python, Boas, and Gila demon, southwest America and Mexico.
Conclusions point to a sensible system of mineral regulation in the digestive system of reptile. However, it is possible that this mechanism extends to other types of bone-eating carnivorous, such as sharks and other marine predators, aquatic mammals, or bearded vultures, according to raptors, according to lignant. He told Gizmodo that he hoped that the task would inspire other researchers to search for these new discovered cells in the animal empire.
