Nick Baker tells all about this aquatic predator that employs odd appendages and intelligent techniques to disarm its fishy prey
Many species of snake, from the anaconda to the banded sea krait, have mastered the watery realm. Nothing notably 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 title, tentacled snake (Erpeton tentaculatum) conjures up some fairly far out photos. A snake with tentacles – how bizarre should that be?
The cause this snake appears by no means to have slithered into the general public conscience is that each tentacles and the snake will not be the truth is 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 reality, the species is so effectively camouflaged that I spent a number of minutes looking at that zoo tank earlier than its inhabitants grew to become 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 area.
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 definitely not kraken-like suckered limbs that drag unsuspecting fish to their doom, slightly a pair of short-scaled projections on both facet of the nostril, simply 13mm lengthy on an grownup.
They are odd, floppy gadgets, and till lately 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 immediately into the snake’s mouth
And the most effective 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 hard motion, it deploys a reflex technique referred to as the ‘C-start’. In lower than six milliseconds, the muscle tissues on the alternative facet of the physique to the risk 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 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, slightly than strike its head immediately in direction of its sufferer, it feigns an attack with a refined motion of the world of stretched-out physique behind the top. The alarmed fish, detecting this dummy transfer, initiates the C-start and darts off in the other way – usually swimming immediately into the snake’s ready mouth.
The entire course of from bluff to seize is quicker than the human eye can understand – so quick that the main points of the deception have solely lately 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 enamel in direction of the again of the mouth.
They can swap between two equally efficient sensory programs relying on the sunshine and water circumstances. When visibility is sweet, 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 could be very cloudy. The snakes can precisely catch fish utilizing both simply their sight or simply their tentacles.
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