Venomous vipers’ lightning strikes in slow-mo
Different snake behaviours have been observed by researchers, who captured their lightning-fast movements in slow motion as the reptiles lunged at prey.
Source: AAP
Blink and you’ll miss it.
Snake bites have always been the stuff of nightmares, but Australian researchers have revealed in fresh and terrifying detail just how different venomous reptiles strike at their prey.
In the largest study of its kind, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology on Thursday, Monash University researchers Alistair Evans and Silke Clueren used high-speed cameras to capture 36 species at the moment they went in for the kill.
Their movements as they lunged at cylinders of warm, muscle-like medical gel – often too fast for human eyes to see – were then reconstructed in three dimensions.
“In many ways, it’s terrifying. You’ve got these massive fangs, sometimes they’re dripping venom, and it all happens faster than the blink of an eye,” Evans said.
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Considered to be some of the fastest snakes on the planet, the quickest vipers in the study reached speeds of more than 4.5 metres a second and bit down on their prey within 22 milliseconds.
Elapids, which cover most venomous snakes in Australia, were slightly less speedy, with the fastest lunging at speeds of 2.5m/sec.
The rapid movement could make it too late for their mammalian prey to even notice a slithery predator before it struck, as it usually takes the animals 50 to 200 milliseconds to register movement, Evans said.
“It can be that the snake has got to them and bitten them before they’ve had any chance to notice them or move,” he said.
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The researchers also looked at how fang locations in a snake’s mouth shaped their behaviours.
Vipers have long fangs that fold back into their mouth and are deployed on a hinge, and so they sink them into their victims before walking them into position to inject venom.
Elapids usually have smaller non-folding fangs. Researchers observed them squeezing venom into their victims by biting repeatedly.
Colubrids have their fangs at the back of the mouth, so they need to open their mouth fully over the prey to bite down before moving in a sawing or zig-zag motion to cut the victim’s flesh to deliver the venom.
Evans said the study would help people understand snake behaviours and the threats posed to reptiles and humans.
He reiterated that snakes did not go out of their way to attack humans and did so only when they had been annoyed or had their territory invaded.
-with AAP
