What Do Snakes Eat? The Foods They Love and How They Hunt Their Prey

Despite having a reputation for being evil, snakes are fascinating, diverse, and intelligent animals that play a vital role in maintaining the ecosystem. As of 2025, there are just over 4,100 recognized species of snakes within the Serpentes suborder, with new species still being discovered.

These strict carnivores use a variety of methods to hunt, capture, and eat their prey, including slowly constricting them, using fast-acting venom, or even just swallowing them whole after ambushing them. 

Understanding these animals’ diets helps us appreciate why they’re ecologically so important. Many species help control pest populations, such as rats and mice. In general, snakes are far less dangerous to humans than the Bible and the media would have you believe. Continue reading to discover what foods snakes enjoy and how they procure them.

Snakes are Carnivores

All snakes are 100% carnivorous. Snakes never eat plant material like leaves or vegetables. To this day, scientists and researchers haven’t been able to find even a single species of snake that eats plants.

Snakes’ bodies simply aren’t designed to derive nutrients from plants, due to these animals’ very short digestive tracts. A snake’s digestive tract is suited to eating very dense, high-calorie foods like small prey animals. Most snakes only eat once every few weeks or so as their meals slowly break down in their stomachs. 

Without the necessary gut bacteria to break down plants or any way to get enough calories out of them, snakes just don’t find plant matter appetizing.

What Snakes Eat

Snakes prefer live prey, and they get far more nutrients out of live animals than dead ones. They will eat eggs from various animals like birds, fish, and even other snakes and reptiles, since eggs are packed with the protein and nutrients they need and are easy targets.

Most snakes eat a variety of small-to-medium-sized prey animals, including: birds, fish, frogs, mice, rats, rabbits, chipmunks, bats, lizards, earthworms, slugs, and, as noted, various eggs.

Larger species, like anacondas and Burmese pythons, will eat larger animals, including monkeys, deer, and capybaras. Anacondas have been known to attack animals like jaguars, though this happens very rarely, and is considered a desperate act.

How Snakes Hunt Their Prey

Despite having no legs to run with or limbs to grasp with, snakes are unbelievably fierce predators that use a variety of methods to hunt prey, such as injecting deadly venom or slowly constricting their prey until the animals suffocate and are rendered unconscious. Some snakes will stalk their prey for hours, waiting for the right moment to strike in the blink of an eye.

In addition to these tactics, snakes have an extremely keen sense of smell. Using their tongues, they pick up information about nearby animals, tracking them for long distances. Research has found that many species, including rattlesnakes, are able to sense nearby animals’ body heat. 

They flick their forked tongues out towards the ground as they slither about, transmitting any information they pick up to their Jacobson’s organ (also known as the vomeronasal organ), which is at the base of a snake’s nasal cavity.

This organ helps snakes determine how far away a prey animal is or even what specific type of animal it is. It can also help snakes detect if a nearby predator poses a threat.