The Atlantic

How to Survive Being Swallowed by Another Animal

“An explosion was audible inside each toad.”
Source: Ear Iew Boo / Michal Zduniak / Shutterstock / The Atlantic

In the 1997 movie Anaconda, there are, to put it mildly, a few scientific inaccuracies. Chief among them: Anacondas do not regurgitate their still-living prey to experience the thrill of a second kill, as the movie’s snake does with Jon Voight. They will sometimes puke up a meal, but since they constrict their victims before swallowing, the expelled individual would be very much dead.

But some animals travel down a predator’s gullet and return to tell the tale. Consider the . There are 500 species every second, creating chemical streams that reach over 100 degrees Celsius and travel at up to 22 miles per hour.

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