FORGET SLITHERING! Tiny, secretive dwarf reed snakes in Southeast Asia escape danger by arching their bodies and tumbling away like a wheel, and scientists have now clocked them at up to 12.1 feet per second (3.69 meters per second), Live Science reported.
The new study, published Monday, Oct. 19, in the journal Current Biology, filmed three species of the genus Pseudorabdion from multiple angles between 2019 and 2022, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo. On average, the snakes’ peak speed while rolling was four times their normal slithering speed. “Rolling allows them to escape from danger very quickly,” said first author Yosuke Kojima, a biology lecturer at Toho University in Japan.
The trick: rolling usually scrambles an animal’s head and senses, which is why so few creatures do it. These snakes keep their heads relatively fixed, facing forward and often lifted off the ground, while the back of the body spins, according to the study and a Toho University summary on ScienceDaily. They can even roll in a fairly straight line along a racetrack just 8 inches wide, and often finish by diving under a nearby object.
Three related reed snakes from another genus, Calamaria, didn’t do it at all. “Behavioral innovation can give rise to surprising new abilities that we would not expect from an animal’s appearance alone,” Kojima said.
Why bother? Researchers have speculated the move confuses predators, and earlier work suggested a rolling snake leaves a patchy scent trail that could throw off scent-hunting king cobras. Spiders and caterpillars can tumble too, but these snakes appear to be the ones that actually steer.
Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.
Sources: Live Science, ScienceDaily (Toho University)
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