African egg-eating snakes can swallow eggs 10 times larger than their head into their body.

The African egg-eating snake (Dasypeltis) is one of two egg-eating snakes in the snake classification that depends entirely on eggs for food (along with the Indian egg-eating snake). This is a non-venomous snake (because it has no fangs), found throughout the African continent, where many species of birds live.

This is a non-venomous snake, but it has false teeth to defend itself. When there is danger, they will crawl zigzag to dazzle the opponent, along with making sounds like very harsh hissing and pretend to attack the opponent. They will not actually bite their opponent because they will easily be exposed. This action of theirs can scare even large animals like elephants.

African egg-eating snakes have extremely flexible jaws and necks that can easily swallow eggs 10 times larger than their body weight. But on the contrary, the spine in the body has a convex structure with edges that can break the egg shell when entering the body. Initially, the snake will curl its body to hold the egg steady, then slowly swallow the egg with its jaws and throat expanded. After entering the body, the egg will be pushed down the spine to break the shell and perform digestion. Finally, after absorbing all the nutrients inside, the egg shell is excreted by the snake. This is an effective way to digest and take advantage of all the nutrients in eggs.

This species is divided into 5 types according to distribution area including: Mountain egg-eating snakes, Central African egg-eating snakes, Southern brown egg-eating snakes, East African egg-eating snakes and shuttle egg-eating snakes are the most common species. The shape and color of each type is different such as: black, brown, blue. The length of each type is also different, from 30 – 120 cm.

This type of snake has a small, narrow head. The body is slender, about 0.8m long. The eyes have flat pupils in a vertical position. The side scales are tiny but have edges. The tail is quite short. The back is gray, gray brown, or greenish brown. There are black spots in the middle of the back and black spots on the sides. Right on the top of the head there are two V-shaped streaks. A similar V-shaped streak is located right behind the neck.

The reason they are given the name “egg-eating snakes” is because they have a special talent for eating eggs. They only eat one thing: eggs from birds. Dasypeltis snakes hunt for eggs on the ground and in trees, mainly at night. However, occasionally, people also see these snakes foraging for food throughout the day.  

Most other snakes can only eat eggs with soft shells (such as lizard eggs and snake eggs), because they do not have “special tools” to break hard egg shells. But the snake that eats Dasypeltis eggs has special “teeth” deep in its throat. The cervical vertebrae form serrated teeth, located in the esophagus, responsible for piercing the eggshell. When the egg is swallowed down to the neck, the egg is punctured by those special teeth. The egg yolk is swallowed into the stomach, and the eggshell is released.

In the summer, female Dasypeltis scabra lays 6-25 eggs. But the strange thing is, these female snakes lay their eggs in each place, but rarely lay all their eggs in the same nest.

During the season when birds lay a lot, snakes try to eat as many eggs as possible to store fat in their bodies. They live on that fat during other seasons of the year – when they can only find and eat a few eggs.