Black mambas typically eat small mammals and birds, though according to Blue Planet Biomes, there have been reports of mambas found with whole parrots or full-grown cobras in their stomachs. In his book Black Mambas (Checkerboard, 2006), Adam G. Klein wrote that black mambas hunt by biting their prey and injecting venom, then releasing it. They then follow it until it becomes paralyzed or dies, at which point they eat it. It doesn’t usually take prey very long to die after being bitten by a black mamba. Black mambas devour their food whole. They have flexible jaws that they can dislocate in order to fit food up to four times the size of their head into their mouth.