The circle of life is a beautiful thing.
This is Tim, a Stimson's Python that lives at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre in Northern Australia. Recently, Tim shed his skin. As he shucked it off, he slithered in a circle. He ended up entering the hole left by the end of his own skin, thus creating a continuous tunnel of skin.
Tim spent 3 hours on Wednesday doing laps through his old skin before exiting it. The Daily Mail quotes Rex Neindorf, the director of the facility:
After trying to exit from his bubble wrap-esque skin for the first time, Tim hit the side of another snake and was forced back in through the mouth of his already shed skin, where he continued to circle.
‘He did laps for about three hours,’ Mr Neindorf said.
Mr Neindorf has worked with snakes for over 30 years and said he had never seen anything like it.
Tim managed to break free from his sloughed skin after a ‘marathon shedding session’ and is back in his enclosure at the reptile centre.
-via The Soul Is Bone