Eating a snake

This question is for long known unknown becuase the answer is really difficult . Here it goes ,
if a snake starts to possible start eating itself beginning from the tail , what will happen ? Will it vanish or what , it can't eat its own mouth so any ideas . I've been doing some reasearch using a rope but that wasn't any good .

It would continue forever. Where do you think the "food" would go?

snake cant chew it only swallows...as far i know

I know , say it starts swallowing itself from the tail , and suppose it was very flexible so that it doesn't have to chase itself for ever , but can happily get up eating a lot towards the end , then it'd reach its mouth , but by theory , it's not possible to have one thing inside the same thing .

That's not possible , i think you mean vice versa.

I think it would just coil up.

I am not sure though

Originally posted by skims
I think it would just coil up.

I am not sure though

seems like it would keep getting smaller until it was stuffed with itself...

But then we can bring in the fact that it could poop out it's own tail, tying it in a knot.

It should just coil up. Eventually all that will be left is the head and a big ball behind the head where the body is. I think.

It would just keep eating until the snake is in a small ball, and can't eat anymore because it can't bend far enough. The snake starts out in a big circle. The circle gets smaller and smaller as he eats his tail. At some point the snake won't be able to eat anymore, because his body can't curl tighter. Remeber that his body has thickness.

Originally posted by ark13
It would just keep eating until the snake is in a small ball, and can't eat anymore because it can't bend far enough. The snake starts out in a big circle. The circle gets smaller and smaller as he eats his tail. At some point the snake won't be able to eat anymore, because his body can't curl tighter. Remeber that his body has thickness.

Ah, but supposing it had infinite elasticity.......

Maybe , we should try it on an actual lump of rope . I suppose I could try .

Originally posted by SicilianNajdorf
Maybe , we should try it on an actual lump of rope . I suppose I could try .

How would you do that? Rope can't eat itself.

Originally posted by SicilianNajdorf
Maybe , we should try it on an actual lump of rope . I suppose I could try .

it's easier to just train a snake to swallow himself

What I'm saying is pretend it has eaten itself by putting the eaten bit just under the eating bit , that makes sense , doesn't it ?