X-ray image of a python digesting rats containing different contrast agent figures.

This in vivo project makes use of 2D electromagnetic radiation and markers of barium sulphate to examine transit times and gastric breakdown in ball pythons. Snakes are obligatory hypercarnivores with absent ability to masticate their prey. Instead, a specialisation of the physically consumption and physiological, as well as mechanical, digestion has evolved in order to digest intact prey.

Along with a few other reptiles, snakes are renowned as model organisms for digestion research due to their elevation of the postprandial response known as specific dynamic action. The digestion of food will launch a number of other physiological and metabolic responses, e.g. in the form of secretion of digestive juice in the stomach and intestines as well as the absorption of nutrients.

In some organisms, particularly snakes, one will in part note the presence of hypertrophy, and in snake; a potent increment in heat generation compared to other vertebrates, as well as pulmonary ventilation.

X-ray imaging is used to give a visual study of the retention time of a meal, allowing for a better understanding of the breakdown process. Many of the mechanisms are present in human physiology, however in a lesser scale. Therefore, human studies are complicated to conduct successfully and identify underlying mechanisms.

The understanding of the physiological processes connected to prandial circumstances in snakes is of fundamental significance in the understanding of vertebrate functions.