The Secret Life of the Adder by Nicholas Milton

Author:Nicholas Milton
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: NATURE / Animals / Reptiles & Amphibians
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The adder then eats the mouse headfirst. (Roger McPhail)

After the head, the adder’s jaws envelop the whole body. (Roger McPhail)

A small mammal will always be swallowed headfirst but other prey like a frog is eaten from either end. Small prey items like froglets are ingested quickly in a matter of minutes, the food being moved down the adder’s gullet using a powerful muscular wave action which pushes it along aiding digestion. However, if an adder kills a fully grown frog or small mammal, they can take up to half an hour to be consumed and then in the case of the mammal several days to digest the fur, skull and bones. During this time, the distended adder is sluggish, one large meal often lasting it for several weeks. During a typical season, a fully grown adder may consume five to ten frogs, newts and small mammals. Adders also need to drink and will regularly visit streams, ponds and puddles during hot weather, dipping their snout beneath the surface and drawing water in through the opening used by the tongue.

After mating, male and non-breeding female adders will begin the journey from their hibernacula to their summer feeding grounds in search of prey, favouring low lying wet or boggy areas such as water meadows, waterlogged heaths and the edges of sphagnum bogs. These areas are often rich in frogs, a favoured prey item particularly of young snakes. Adders will travel surprisingly long distances in search of good feeding grounds, older male snakes in particular having favoured hunting habitats which can up to a 1.6km or a mile from where they hibernated. The herpetologist Sylvia Sheldon found that in non-breeding years, females can also range over a wide area in pursuit of prey species. A female adder she followed in 2007 moved half a kilometre between two sites and in 1994 another female moved just over one kilometre. This journey can take several days and is often when people out walking come across them. Here they will spend the next four months of their lives before beginning the journey back to their hibernation sites in the early autumn.

The snake’s jaws detach from the skull so that the adder can fully stretch its mouth over the mouse. (Roger McPhail)

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