Nick Baker tells all about this aquatic predator that employs odd appendages and intelligent ways to disarm its fishy prey
Many species of snake, from the anaconda to the banded sea krait, have mastered the watery realm. Nothing significantly uncommon in that. But there’s one which has fascinated me since I first set eyes on it, in a tank in an American zoo.
Its identify, tentacled snake (Erpeton tentaculatum) conjures up some fairly far out pictures. A snake with tentacles – how bizarre should that be?
The motive this snake appears by no means to have slithered into the general public conscience is that each tentacles and the snake aren’t in truth as spectacular as they may at first sound. And that’s all a part of the purpose.
Inhabiting the weed-choked ponds, ditches and paddy fields of South-East Asia, the tentacled snake does a spectacular job of precisely resembling the vegetation of its watery home. It’s a thin little factor, lower than 75cm lengthy and adorned with a sombre patterning of brown and gray, sometimes creating a dwelling fuzz of algae so as to add to its crypsis.
In truth, the species is so nicely camouflaged that I spent a number of minutes gazing that zoo tank earlier than its inhabitants turned obvious. This is the snake equal of a praying mantis. Fully aquatic, it sits immobile amid the tangle of stems, ready for small fish to blunder into its private house.
So trusting is that this creature of its camouflage, that even plucking one out of the water isn’t sufficient for it to interrupt out of character. It stays stiff and unmoving.
So, about these tentacles. These are actually not kraken-like suckered limbs that drag unsuspecting fish to their doom, fairly a pair of short-scaled projections on both aspect of the nostril, simply 13mm lengthy on an grownup.
They are odd, floppy units, and till not too long ago they’ve had scientists perplexed. Were they lures to entice curious fish inside vary? Possibly. Were they additional equipment to camouflage? Unlikely. As it seems, these appendages are a extremely enervated pair of directional ‘fish finders’.
The alarmed fish usually swims straight into the snake’s mouth
And the perfect little bit of their dastardly design is that they have developed to outwit a well-known fish predation avoidance technique – and even use it to their benefit. When a fish senses a difficult motion, it deploys a reflex technique referred to as the ‘C-start’. In lower than six milliseconds, the muscle mass on the alternative aspect of the physique to the menace contract, bending the fish into an excessive ‘C’ form. It is now able to speed up away from hazard – however the bother for the fish is that the snake anticipates this.
Adopting a attribute position with its physique stretched out and its head and neck partially bent backwards in the direction of its tail, the snake waits immobile for a fish to bumble into the arc created. Once it detects the fish with its tentacles, fairly than strike its head straight in the direction of its sufferer, it feigns an attack with a refined motion of the realm of stretched-out physique behind the pinnacle. The alarmed fish, detecting this dummy transfer, initiates the C-start and darts off in the other way – usually swimming straight into the snake’s ready mouth.
The complete course of from bluff to seize is quicker than the human eye can understand – so quick that the small print of the deception have solely not too long ago been revealed utilizing highspeed movie. The recreation is over for the fish in lower than 30 milliseconds.
Tentacled snakes are thought-about rear-fanged. They deploy a particular venom to quickly subdue feisty fish through grooved tooth in the direction of the again of the mouth.
They can swap between two equally efficient sensory programs relying on the sunshine and water situations. When visibility is nice, they’ll make do with simply their imaginative and prescient, however the tentacles come into their very own when it’s darkish or when the water may be very cloudy. The snakes can precisely catch fish utilizing both simply their sight or simply their tentacles.
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