By Chad Love

Don't tell New Yorkers, but  snakes are once again in the news. This time, however, it's not rampaging  rat snakes we must worry about, but a southeast Asian water snake with the fish-catching ability of a tournament  pro.
 
It's called, appropriately enough, the tentacled snake,  and a Vanderbilt University researcher recently documented how this snake  uses its body to - in essence - make fish swim right into its  mouth.

From scientificblogging.com
"I  haven't been able to find reports of any other predators that exhibit a  similar ability to influence and predict the future behavior of their prey,"  says Kenneth Catania, associate professor of biological sciences at  Vanderbilt University, who has used high-speed video to deconstruct the  snake's unusual hunting technique.... "The snake forms an unusual "J" shape  with its head at the bottom of the "J" when it is fishing. Then it remains  completely motionless until a fish swims into the area near the hook of the  "J." That is when the snake strikes.

The snakes' motions take only a  few hundredths of a second and are too fast for the human eye to follow.  However, its prey reacts even faster, in a few thousandths of a second. In  fact, fish are famous for the rapidity of their escape response and it has  been extensively studied. These studies have found that many fish have a  special circuit in their brains that initiates the escape, which biologists  call the "C-start." Fish ears sense the sound pressure on each side of their  body. When the ear on one side detects a disturbance, it sends a message to  the fishes' muscles causing its body to bend into a C-shape facing in the  opposite direction so it can begin swimming away from danger as quickly as  possible.

Catania is the first scientist to study this  particular predator-prey interaction with the aid of a high-speed video  camera. When he began examining the movements of the snake and its prey in  slow motion, he saw something peculiar. When the fish that the snake targets  turn to flee, most of them turn toward the snake's head and many literally  swim into its jaws! In 120 trials with four different snakes, in fact, he  discovered that an amazing 78 percent of the fish turned toward the snake's  head instead of turning away."Once the C-start begins, the fish can't turn  back," Catania says. "The snake has found a way to use the fish's escape  reflex to its advantage."
 
The  specialized body fake the snake uses is obvious in the  slow-motion video. A little wiggle, the fish's C-start is  triggered and it turns right into the snake's waiting mouth. How cool  is that?

Comments (9)

from buckhunter wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

Now that's fast.

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from shane wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

Evolution at it's best. And hardest to believe.

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from seadog wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

That's pretty cool.

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from jbird wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

Cool video! Never heard of this before. Learn something new every day on this site!

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from Big O wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

Look's like something else someone will "release in florida.

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from seadog wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

You got that right, Big O. We got pythons, iguanas, snakeheads ... you name it, it's probably runnin loose in Florida.

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from snowninja wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

That is amazing. You don't even notice the snake moving it's body to make the fish swim to him in the full speed vids, but when they slow it down you can see the physics work. Still don't like snakes though.

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from shane wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

I forgot to mention that I used to see water snakes dangling from low branches and fishing like herons. Must be pretty smart, as snakes go.

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from FloridaHunter1226 wrote 2 years 31 weeks ago

Big O... when it comes to snakes and stupidity, we have an excess of both in Florida. Want to see animals only seen in other countries around the world... COME TO FLORIDA! Funny... people think that many come for disney...

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from snowninja wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

That is amazing. You don't even notice the snake moving it's body to make the fish swim to him in the full speed vids, but when they slow it down you can see the physics work. Still don't like snakes though.

+2 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from shane wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

I forgot to mention that I used to see water snakes dangling from low branches and fishing like herons. Must be pretty smart, as snakes go.

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from buckhunter wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

Now that's fast.

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from shane wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

Evolution at it's best. And hardest to believe.

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from seadog wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

That's pretty cool.

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from jbird wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

Cool video! Never heard of this before. Learn something new every day on this site!

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from Big O wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

Look's like something else someone will "release in florida.

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from seadog wrote 2 years 32 weeks ago

You got that right, Big O. We got pythons, iguanas, snakeheads ... you name it, it's probably runnin loose in Florida.

+1 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

from FloridaHunter1226 wrote 2 years 31 weeks ago

Big O... when it comes to snakes and stupidity, we have an excess of both in Florida. Want to see animals only seen in other countries around the world... COME TO FLORIDA! Funny... people think that many come for disney...

+1 Good Comment? Yes | No | Report

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All submitted comments are subject to the rules set forth in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.