Naga Digestive Behavior

Just so we can keep Shady Knight's thread on topic... (change thread title to something better?)

This might seem like a weird idea for a thread - but nagas have two stomachs, and how they digest food will determine the life of the forest/jungle around them. Does one stomach digest faster than another? Or do they digest at a similar rate? If you have two stomachs that digest at different paces, that would mean acids with different concentration in each stomach, and would be a bad idea. In a normal stomach, when the acid level lowers or rises it gives way to fevers and stomach aches. Minus the fever in Felarya though.

I also think that nagas wont be able to sustain themselves at their height if they need massive amounts of food daily. Both stomachs should take equally long to digest, but one's more suited for tinies and the other more suited for larger prey. However, they should still take at the very very least: a few days to digest prey.

It's usually the human stomach holds smaller prey while the snake stomach holds large preys, like a snake would hunt. You could also blame the inaccuracy on people not being biologists.

yes, well what should it be then? I think it doesn't make any sense that one stomach would digest faster than the other however. Though that was merely a suggestion by aisu, I don't know how many people assume that as well.

I didn't know they had two stomachs. I usually just assumed it was magic.

One digest much smaller food than the other one. It takes less time to break down something small than something massive.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

yes, well what should it be then? I think it doesn't make any sense that one stomach would digest faster than the other however. Though that was merely a suggestion by aisu, I don't know how many people assume that as well.

It isn't about time, its about size.

Snakes take so long to digest prey because they are eating a whole animal that is very large compared to them.

A human is roughly 3 inches tall to a predator. It is the size of their finger. There is less matter in a human that size than there would be in a candy bar. That's why it would only take a few hours, and why humans, more than anything, are just a light snack instead of a dietary staple.

Now if a Naga ate, say, a Jumping Dridder, then yeah it would go into her tail stomach and take several days to digest. Most try not to do that kind of stuff often though, since a full secondary stomach makes them very sluggish and vulnerable.

think of it like this, as long as they can fill their small stomach they are full, but if they want they can keep eating and get stuffed, but that would take much much more. When their first stomach gets full, their second stomach opens up and the overflow flows into it. But as Cliff said, over eating can make you sluggish and vulnerable, so while it might mean you can go longer with out eating it would also put you at a greater level of risk.

I feed my gopher snake a tiny little mouse, and he doesn't need to eat until 2 weeks later, it's not just size.

No offense, but I think you need to remember that Nagas are NOT real. They can have different digestive patterns than real snakes, it can vary on the individual or the sub species.

You're right it isn't just the size of the prey, it is also because snakes are cold blooded, thus their metabolism is directly related to the ambient temperature of its surrounds. As your little gopher snake is kept in a Terrarium, it is exposed to constant warm temperature thus its metabolism will be faster than that of a snake found in the wild.

How this would relate to something that is half mammal and half reptile I don't know...

... yeah I am going assume that they are warm blooded, frankly the other options, not so fun. Now its important to note that a warm blooded creature at that size is going to have to eat proportionally less and less than a smaller one as their largest energy expenditure becomes easier to maintain just due to size.

Yeah. I always assumed nagas were warm-blooded as well, mostly since the base of operations in most vertebrates is the head and torso, which on a tauric being, are human... Plus, a character that needs to constantly regulate its body temp makes for some rather nasty difficulties when writing.

That said, covering something big in acid and something small and putting them side-by-side, theoretically, the larger object will digest faster due to it having more surface area, but since the smaller thing has less mass to dissolve, it will finish sooner. Size does have some effects, but it's not the whole picture.

I had Hilary and Derrek hibernate during winter once. And honestly, aren't we overthinking nagas here? I mean, is it really vital to know how they digest? The wiki also says they have a particularly strong stomach, so I guess that would also explain the quick digestion.

well if you wanted to be specific, it affects the surrounding wildlife a lot if you have giant snake women eating massive amounts of food every day. Especially because there are quite a few nagas, but only so many giant preds to eat. In order to keep balance in the ecosystem it's important.

Do you seriously think people are going to go in every single details about digestion in their story unless they're writing a complete essay about the inner workings of Nagas? This is really overthinking something that really isn't a big deal, if you can call it a deal at all. Nagas rarely eat something massive, which would make sense that they take a long time to digest completely, but you need to realize that it's not going to be black and white. They're not going to eat humans everyday. They'll mostly sustain on animals that reproduce a lot. Some will digest faster, some will digest slower, and there are no needs to go into absurd detail for something that will probably never be mentioned in complete detail.

Of course it wont be written about, not everything is meant to be written about, but it's important for determining creatures that will be there. I just said I'd prefer if nagas only had to eat once every few days, because it's a lot more believable that way, given their snake half. They have to eat larger creatures, because otherwise they'd need to eat several dozen human sized ones. However, eating a bunch of large creatures every day will drive the wildlife off. That - and there are a lot of giant nagas out there.

Hunting influences the wild I think more than people seem to care about, we can't just randomly place a bunch of large creatures who eat each other every day, because then problems arise.

Like I said, you are ignoring two things: 1. writers are not essentially biologists. 2. nagas are not black-on-white snakes, so they're not going to follow every single thing about snakes.

That's why I suggest that they need to eat once every few days instead of every couple weeks.

Well, you forgot a third aspect, probably the entire reason why nagas are like that: It's a setting with a lot of vore content. If they hate every few days, it wouldn't catter to the vore tendencies. Also, why are you so worried about Nagas when every other predators, which usually have a weaker stomach than nagas, all get a free pass? With that in mind, the long digestion would make sense only for something in the large stomach, since a human is pretty much the size of a single grape to them.

I'm dealing with nagas right now, besides Nagas are supposed to be the most voracious. Also, that doesn't make sense. Both stomachs are connected, how does one digest faster than the other? That circles back to what I said about difference in PH levels of the acids specific to the stomach.

If they are the same level of acidity, then wouldn't the huge chunk of meat take a longer time to completely break down than the tiny cubes?

Archmage_Bael wrote:

I'm dealing with nagas right now, besides Nagas are supposed to be the most voracious. Also, that doesn't make sense. Both stomachs are connected, how does one digest faster than the other? That circles back to what I said about difference in PH levels of the acids specific to the stomach.

Its about size, Bael. It takes a lot less time to digest a candy bar than it would to digest an entire ham. To a giant pred a human would, proportionately of course, have less matter in it than the average candy bar. That's why it would only take a few hours to digest them. That's also why humans are not a dietary stable. They are not that filling, but they taste good. They're a light snack, at best.

Keep in mind, most of a pred's diet isn't even made up of humans. Smaller animans, fish, fruit, and so on makes up the vast majority of their diets.

Also, nagas are not the most voracious. They may need to eat a bit more on average because of the energy all those muscles in their tail requires, but it isn't like they are hungry all the time, eating anything at any chance they get. Granted, some of them do this in stories, but I think that's more a case of bad writing.

Well to respond to the original post, I think the two tomaches digest at a different speed yes. it would be much faster for the human one.

yeah i've alwaysed wonder about how a nagas stomach worked. but i think for now, this will work, thanks guys. but one last thing how come crisis's stomach is so powerful and yet no serious problems(heart burn)? is her's the most powerful or is there one thats even more poweful?

What do you mean so powerful?
If you're talking about the part in the wiki where it says someone in a titanium exoskeleton would have no chance of survival, note that while titanium forms an extremely unreactive oxidized layer on the surface of the metal, the metal itself is highly reactive and will react with acids. The motion of the stomach could cause parts of titanium to scratch each other, removing the protective layer, allowing a small part of the metal to react. It'd still take and age to break down though.
Oh and the part about grenades? That really goes for any predator I believe. Grenades aren't going to burst a pred's stomach or anything.