Larger ball pythons typically eat larger mice or rats. Selecting prey for a ball python. As a general rule, you should select a rodent that is 1 to 1.25 times the size of the midsection of your snake.

To learn more about the effects that their feeding style has on their bodies, Leinwand and the team compared the hearts of ball pythons (Python regius). One group of pythons had fasted for 28 days.

Leslie Leinwand, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and study coauthor first began looking at how pythons adapted to deal with these huge feedings back in 2011. 2 She and her ...

Pythons are famous for swallowing enormous meals whole—including morsels bigger than their own body mass. | To digest large, infrequent feasts, a python's heart works overtime by increasing ...

But because ball pythons in the wild eat relatively large meals and often go for extended periods without dining, they may not actually compete with one another much, Dr. Miller said.