Since the arrangement of muscles in a snake's body is far more complex than that in our own rib cage, these animals can adapt their bending to practically any landscape, from a rocky path to a rodent burrow. Many snakes also use their bending skills to kill their prey by coiling tightly around them. Using sensors implanted inside mice, Moon measures the pressure that snake muscles exert on the animals. To constrict a mouse, a snake quickly and simultaneously contracts many muscles on one side of its body. In this case, rather than forming an S, its body forms one or more loops that enclose the prey.
Suffocation is one common explanation for how coiling kills.
But it takes about four minutes for a rat to die of asphyxiation, whereas a snake can constrict a rodent to death in just one. Moon's research suggests that the reason lies in the way the snake interferes with the circulation and heartbeat of its prey. His measurements show that constriction can cause the pressure inside a mouse to rise to twice the animal's normal blood pressure. As a result, the heart cannot keep pumping blood to the brain, lungs, and other tissues, and the mouse may die of a stroke or heart attack long before it would suffocate. Once the mouse is dead, the snake begins to maneuver the carcass into its stomach.