Diet: Dekay’s Brown Snakes are some of the only snakes in North America known to hunt snails and do so in a unique way. Many specialized snail hunting snakes such as the blunt-headed snakes and snail-eating snakes, have modified lower jaws to scoop the snail out of the shell, lacking any specialized anatomy, brown snakes have to find an alternative strategy. They bite onto the soft body of the snail and push it around until the snail becomes wedged in a natural crevice. The snake then twists until the muscles holding the shell to the soft body begin to weaken. Only then is the snake able to pull the body of the snail out of the shell where it is later consumed.
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