Snakes have an impressive range of locomotory styles and. Apart from the obvious slithering and sliding, snakes can climb, swim, burrow and some can even glide. And now we can add cartwheeling to the list.
Biologists working in Malaysia observed the unusual behaviour in the dwarf reed snake, a small, secretive, nocturnal species that spends the day hidden under rocks or amongst leaf litter.
As they document in the journal Biotropica, when danger looms, it forms its body into an upright hoop and bounces away at speed.
While other species are known to roll downhill to escape danger, the dwarf reed snake is able to propel itself over level ground, without the assistance of gravity.
“It’s very energetically expensive for the snake,” says Evan Quah, who led the work at Universiti Malaysia Sabah.
“They cannot sustain it for long and they tire out very quickly. I think it’s a behaviour that’s only expressed when the animal is extremely threatened or under extreme duress. We believe it could have evolved from a behaviour we call saltation, which is performed by other snakes where they thrash about to confuse and startle predators.”
Quah says that the dwarf reed snake might not be the only cartwheeling species out there.
“There are unsubstantiated, anecdotal reports of other species performing what seems to be rolling behaviour. Since the paper was published, I’ve been approached by a number of people who have shared their own experiences.”
Main image: Dwarf reed snake cartwheeling © Evan Quah
