A python, by looping its body around an animal, can use its powerful muscles to squeeze until the animal can no longer breath. The anaconda lives in Central and tropical South America. It is a member of the Boa family of snakes and is dark green in color with round markings. Because the anaconda's weight is usually supported by liquid, it can grow larger than snakes that make their homes in trees. The water-based anaconda often winds up drowning its victims as they are pulled into the water rather than suffocating them by constriction.
Snakes swallow their victims whole.
Although it is often said a snake's jaw can be unhinged from the skull to allow something much larger than the snake's girth to be swallowed, the jaws are actually connected by a ligament that stretches. Once the carcass is inside the snake it must be digested quickly before it rots in the serpent's gut. If a snake cannot digest his prey before bacteria does, the snake will be forced to regurgitate it. If he cannot spit it out, the snake may die of food poisoning. The snake usually wraps his extended jaws around the head of the victim and swallows working its way down to the victim's feet.