Nature is metal, as they say. In the latest example of this hardcore insanity, a photographer snapped a stunning photo of an eel burrowing its way out of a heron’s throat mid-air after the bird swallowed the animal.
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Snake Eel Bursts From Heron Like an Alien
This is some wild stuff. Life, uh, ah, uh… finds a way, apparently. A way out of being eaten, in this instance. The morbid photo, captured by amateur wildlife photographer Sam Davis of Maryland, proves just as much. This family of eel species, the snake eel, truly does find ways out of getting eaten. They are equipped with a hard pointed tail tip made specifically for burrowing out of trouble. Trouble, as in the stomachs of predators. This thing literally tunnels out of a predator’s abdomen wall after bring plucked off the soft sand ocean floor and swallowed whole. In this instance, the eel was stuck i the great blue heron’s gut cavity.
Eel Opens Heron’s Throat, Makes Gruesome Escape
It's like a scene from Alien 😱
— LADbible (@ladbible) November 5, 2020
This is not photoshop. The pics are legit. And according to the photographer Davis, things got even darker from there. The heron, as he was murdered from the inside out, was als stalked by two young eagles sensing they could get an easy meal out of the heron’s predicament. It wasn’t clear how much longer the heron lived (like five minutes?) but Davis was able to snap the pics of a lifetime while the heron’s heart was still beating.
That said, Davis decided not to post those snapshots to his Instagram account or on social media, presumably because they are pretty gross. (We love gross here, though.)
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published Nov 5, 2020.