The most interesting one-footed snake you'll see all day

Here's the story as reported in the Telegraph -

Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered the reptile clinging to the wall of her bedroom with its talons in the middle of the night...

Mrs Duan said she was so scared she grabbed a shoe and beat the snake to death before preserving its body in a bottle of alcohol...

A more common mutation among snakes is the growth of a second head.. but have very little chance of surviving in the wild anyway, especially as the heads have a tendency to attack each other.

What strikes my eye (apart from the Biblical damage the lady did on the snake's head) is the reptile-sized lump in the middle of the snake's body and the resemblance of the situation to that of the hawk with a songbird's claw protruding from its gullet:

I have found two discussion threads on the one-footed snake incident, in one of which I found a link to this photo of a snake that burst after swallowing an alligator.

I think last year I blogged a video of a snake that swallowed a frog and then the frog clambored back out of the snake's mouth, which I can't find at the moment (but you could look it up on YouTube...).

There is certainly fossil evidence of snakes with legs, but my guess at present for this curious incident is that an ingested reptile managed to extrude its claw through a weak spot in the snakes body wall - although I would much prefer to hear that proper study of the creature shows the leg to be a vestigial appendage.

Credit for best comment so far goes to Blackstar at Reddit:

What we're looking at here is a lizard so powerful that it bursts through the body of a snake that has eaten it and then proceeds to climb a wall with its sole exposed limb. With a one-armed snake we could at least take solace in the fact that natural selection would probably snuff it out before it passed that adaptation on. A lizard that powerful simply cannot be stopped!

Snake photo credit CEN/Europics; story discovered by Arbroath.

Addendum: Found a case of a snake in India with protruding "frog legs" here (no photo).

Second addendum: Pix of (?same) Indian "frog-legged snake" here.

World's smallest snake discovered

"The world's smallest snake, averaging just 10cm (4 inches) and as thin as a spaghetti noodle, has been discovered on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

The snake - named Leptotyphlops carlae - is the smallest of the 3,100 known snake species… Researchers believe that the snake - a type of thread snake - is so rare that it has survived un-noticed until now…

In contrast to other species of snake - some of which can lay up to 100 eggs in a single clutch - the world's smallest snake only produces a single egg…

"If a tiny snake were to have more than one offspring, each egg would have to share the same space occupied by the one egg and so the two hatchlings would be half the normal size." The hatchlings might then be too small to find anything small enough to eat.

This has led the researchers to believe that the Barbadian snake is as small as a snake can evolve to be.” (Text and image credit to the BBC)

Snake (the game) being beaten

The player controls a long, thin creature, resembling a snake, which roams around on a bordered plane, picking up food (or some other item), trying to avoid hitting its own tail or the "walls" that surround the playing area. Each time the snake eats a piece of food, its tail grows longer, making the game increasingly difficult. The user controls the direction of the snake's head (up, down, left, or right), and the snake's body follows. The player cannot stop the snake from moving while the game is in progress, and cannot make the snake go in reverse.

The embed above is the final image in a GIF showing Snake being totally beaten.  It just takes a couple minutes.

Some birds protect their nests with snakeskin

Here's the abstract, from The American Naturalist:

Many species of birds use shed snake skin in nest construction, but this behavior remains poorly understood. Ecological context is likely key for understanding how this unusual, but widespread, behavior evolved. We use comparative and experimental approaches to suggest that the evolution of this behavior is mediated by nest morphology and predator communities. First, we reviewed the literature and found that 78 species from 22 families have been reported to use shed snake skin in nest construction. All but one of these species are passerines and, using comparative analyses, we show that this behavior is disproportionately observed in cavity-nesting species. Second, we examined a subsample of North American species, all of which are reported to use snake skin in nest construction, to see whether the proportion of nests with snake skin differs between cavity- and open cup–nesting species. This analysis suggested that the proportion of nests with snake skin is roughly 6.5 times higher in cavity- than in open cup–nesting species. Finally, we used a series of experiments and comparisons to test four hypotheses whereby snake skin could award fitness benefits (nest predation, nest microbiotas, nest ectoparasites, social signaling) and found support for the predation hypothesis. Snake skin reduced nest predation in cavity, but not open cup, nests. These unequal fitness benefits highlight different ecological conditions between nest morphologies and likely explains why, across species, cavity-nesting birds show this behavior more frequently than open cup–nesting birds.

Embedded image from The New York Times, where the results are discussed.

Snake wine and scorpion wine

To prepare this incredible beverage a cobra snake or some scorpions are put into a bottle fulfilled with transparent rice wine liquor and some herbs are added before the drink is left to ferment for months. The venomous cobra snake used to make Snake wine is preserved to have the snake poison dissolved in the rice wine, but because snake venoms are protein-based they are inactivated by the denaturing effects of ethanol, and no more dangerous, but this makes a healthy liquor with many health benefits.

In my view, this is a sad fate for noble creatures, especially because as I understand it the purported "health benefits" are to increase the sexual performance of gullible men.

Pix and text via Sakkoo.

Beer snakes

It was the evening of July 1, and the St. Paul Saints had set out to break a record. The Saints -- known for eye-catching promotions such as hosting the world's largest food fight in 2018, the world's largest Twister game in 2017 and the world's largest pillow fight in 2015 -- wanted to set the North American record for the longest beer cup snake after noticing the trend pop up in baseball stadiums across the country as pandemic restrictions loosened and fans returned to their seats.

After the Saints cut off the beer taps in the seventh inning, the team brought its collected beer cups to the 10,000 Takes section and began assembling the beer cup snake, which slowly expanded toward the top of the section, over and above them, before expanding onto the concourse.

The team brought out a tape measure. It read 102 feet.

The history of the beer cup snake is hazy, at best, but The Drinks Business -- a publication covering the beer, wine and spirits industry -- stated in 2013 that the longest beer cup snake was constructed that year at the Sydney Cricket Ground, reaching 175 meters, a little over 574 feet. The Sydney Morning Herald cites the first beer cup snake ever occurring at the WACA cricket ground in Perth, Australia, in January 1997. While Mroz's family can stake an earlier claim, wherever the beer cup snake started, the popularity of the plastic animals has endured in the cricket world, also popping up at matches this summer...

"If you actually think about it, from a COVID standpoint, we were staying so far away from each other," Mroz said. "Now people are touching cups that other people's saliva is all over. We just went from 0 to 100 in a week, but it shows the resilience of human beings, and how sports really brings people together."

More information at ESPN.

Pythons

I've seen several articles in the past week discussing a report in PNAS about pythons in south Florida.  Excerpts from a StarTribune article:

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that sightings of medium-size mammals are down dramatically -- as much as 99 percent, in some cases -- in areas where pythons and other large, non-native constrictor snakes are known to be lurking...

Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons, native to Southeast Asia, are believed to be living in the Everglades, where they thrive in the warm, humid climate... The National Park Service has counted 1,825 Burmese pythons that have been caught in and around Everglades National Park since 2000...

The researchers found staggering declines in animal sightings: a drop of 99.3 percent among raccoons, 98.9 percent for opossums, 94.1 percent for white-tailed deer and 87.5 percent for bobcats... Although scientists cannot definitively say the pythons are killing off the mammals, the snakes are the prime suspect.

And from the Washington Post:

Officials can’t stop invasive pythons and anacondas from marauding in the Everglades, Reed said; they can only hope to contain them. “We’re trying to prevent spread to the Florida Keys and elsewhere north.”.. A female python can lay 100 eggs, though 54 is considered the norm...

Andrew Wyatt, president of the Reptile Keepers, which advocates on behalf of snake importers, dismissed the study. “They play fast and loose with facts and make big jumps to conclusions,” Wyatt said. The authors contradict prior studies showing that mercury in the water has played a role in the deaths of small mammals, he said...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service predicted that a new generations of Burmese pythons on the edge of their non-native range can adapt and “expand to colder climates.”

Snake eats rattlesnake

From a sequence of seven photos; the fifth shows the rattles on the victim. Looks like a black snake, though one comment suggested it is an "Eastern indigo."

Here's another sequence of photos from NSW in which a brown snake was swallowed by a red belly black snake, then turned around inside the black snake and slithered back out the mouth to freedom!

Almost an ouroboros - but not quite.

Addendum: Anonymous provided the following info: "It is a Texas Indigo and a Western Diamondback. The pictures were taken on the King Ranch in South Texas."

A snake besieged by ticks

From the Aussie Pythons and Snakes website, where "Straddle Ranger" posted this comment:

I am the one who found the snake. I manage all the Campgrounds on South Stradbroke Island off the coast of the Gold Coast and arranged for it to be transported to the mainland by the Coast Guard, and for the RSPCA animal ambulance to transport it to Curumbin Wildlife Hospital. The poor snake was in an awful way, and it looked like he/she was slithering around blind. We could not do anything else but help the poor thing. Of course we have had the horrible comments that a shovel would have been the best thing for it, because to some people if it is not covered in fur, and in their opinion warm and fuzzy, it does not deserve help. Fortunately we don't all feel that way about our scaly friends, and I'd rather this little fellow, than an epidemic of the rat & mouse population. I have spoken to the hospital, and they are doing blood work, to see if there is any other underlying conditions. Apparently there was a combination of paralysis ticks and brown bush ticks and there were well over 100 of them.

If you really want to see a photo of the myriad of removed ticks in an emesis basin, click here.  Followup: the snake is now in foster care and will be released back into the wild.

Fascinating.  I for one did not know that ticks attacked non-mammalian species. 

Via Reddit.

Snake with two feet

Yesterday I posted a story about a "one-footed snake." In response, Kingdom Studies provided links to four photos, two of which are embedded above, of a snake caught in Davie County, North Carolina, last year.

I presume the mechanism is the same as I postulated yesterday. As best I can tell, the underside of the feet face toward the head of the snake, consistent with the way snakes swallow their prey head-first. It's interesting that in this case and the one with one foot protruding there is an adjacent swelling - presumably a partial herniation of some of the intestine.

Photo credit Jeff Parrish.

Titanoboa - largest snake in the history of the world

It grew up to 45 feet long, weighed more than a ton and dined on giant turtles and fearsome crocodiles. It was also the biggest known snake to have ever lived...

Scientists discovered the fossilised backbones of the super-sized snake in a giant open-cast coal mine at Cerrejon in northern Colombia and estimated that at the fattest point on its very long body the snake would have been about three feet wide.

It lived about 60 million years ago, some 5 million years after the demise of the last dinosaurs, and before the warm-blooded mammals had been able to establish themselves as the largest and most widespread animal lifeforms on the planet.

The extinct reptile, formally named Titanoboa cerrejonensis, weighed about 1.25 tons and would have been the top predator in its semi-aquatic habitat of rivers and forests where it would have eaten practically anything that moved, from large tarpon-like fish the size of sharks to extinct crocodiles up to 20 feet long.

Apart from the expected "wow" factor, there is an additional consideration that impacts the debate on global warming:

A general rule for cold-blooded animals is that they get bigger the nearer they live to the equator, and the warmer the ambient temperatures are. Based on this principle, and armed with the knowledge of what is known about snakes today, the researchers were able to estimate the average temperatures of this tropical region 60 million years ago.

The size of Titanoboa indicates that it lived in an environment where the average yearly temperature was between 30C and 34C, which is about 5C hotter than the average temperatures at Cerrejon in Colombia today.

"This temperature estimate is much hotter than modern temperatures in tropical rainforests anywhere in the world... That means that tropical rainforests could exist at temperatures of 3C to 4C hotter than modern tropical rainforests experience," Dr Jaramillo said.

"These data challenge the view that tropical vegetation lives near its climatic optimum, and it has profound implications in understanding the effect of current global warming on tropical plants," he said.

Suggesting that global warming, if it occurs, may not be a threat to current tropical rainforests.

Grand mal seizure in a snake

YouTube link.

The snake is a Black Racer, photographed in Naples, Florida by the sister of reader Ron Rizzo, who forwarded it to us to share. During the first half of this brief video the snake exhibits only some purposeless writhing on the side of a road.  Then it launches into full-blown grand mal seizure activity, which according to the photographer was a pre-terminal event.

Any animal with a brain is susceptible to motor seizures, which are a manifestation of uncontrolled electrical activity in the neurons.  If I had to guess at an etiology, the roadside occurrence would suggest to me that the snake had previously incurred head trauma from a passing vehicle, which eventually led to cerebral edema or intracranial bleeding.  Alternatively it may have encountered a poison or a neurotoxic venom.  In any case, it's a interesting activity to observe.

Another real-life ouroboros

One explanation for this unusual behavior was offered in the Reddit thread discussing the gif:

Snake-owner here. One reason snakes do this is because they are agitated from getting too hot. Judging by the fact the snake is in the water bowl I would suspect this is the reason. EDIT: Snakes are cold blooded so their metabolic rate is controlled by how they regulate their body temperature, a hot snake has an increased metabolism and would likely feel hungry if it hasn't eaten recently, which could drive this behaviour. Turning off the heat-lamp and spraying them with cool water will cause them to spit themselves out.  I hope in this case it was ok :(

Another example was posted in 2009.  For details about the mythical Ouroboros, see my 2008 post.

Python tries to eat zookeeper's head

A female zoo owner in Germany was rescued at the weekend by colleagues after a 12 foot long python began trying to swallow her... The nine-stone snake with 70 sharp teeth attacked Renate as she cleaned out her cage.

'The jaws of the snake opened so wide that, with one lunge, she was able to completely cover the woman’s face,' said a police spokeswoman.

'She feared that with a few more gulps her head would be inside.'

Renate instinctively stuck her thumbs into the jawbone of the snake to try to get it to relieve its pressure. Colleagues then sprayed water hoses on to it and it finally slithered off.

Renate needed hospital treatment for bites and shock. Antonia had to settle for a supper of live white rats instead.

(via Neatorama)

Worm fence (snake fence)

This is the iconic fence of American Civil War movies.  The OED tracks the use of snake fence to the beginning of the nineteenth century -

(1805) R. Parkinson Tour Amer. I. i. 48   Snake-fences; which are rails laid with the ends of one upon the other, from eight to sixteen in number in one length.

- and defines it as an American idiom.   Worm fence has been noted as early as 1833; other terms include "zigzag fence" and "battlefield fence."   The best description I've found is at a page by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (Illinois):

Very few new rails are made any more because they can only be split successfully from large, straight, solid logs without knots, such as the oaks and walnuts that grew in virgin timber.

The log was cut four "ax handles" long -- about eleven feet. The bark was peeled off and wooden mauls and wooden wedges, made of ironwood or other very hard wood, were used to split it into halves, then quarters, then eighths, like pieces of pie. These in turn were split into  roughly triangular or rectangular rails measuring about 4 by 4 or 3 by 5 inches. The rails were laid on the ground in a very exact zigzag pattern with the ends extending a little over a foot from where they crossed. After the fence was seven or eight rails high, each corner was strengthened and braced by two other rails, or stakes, one on each side, sunk a foot or more in the ground and slanted upward to cross and hold the fence in place. These stake rails, in turn, were locked in place by an additional horizontal rail or "rider". Between seven and eight thousand rails were needed to build a mile of "worm" fence -- enough to enclose a forty-acre field...

None remain except red oak, white oak and black walnut, weathered and gray but as sound as the day they were split. All those made from less durable woods are gone.

"Worm" fences seemed a prodigal waste of land in later years because they occupied from three to four times as much ground as the modern barbed wire and woven wire fences. They quickly grew up in wild roses, wild raspberries, wild blackberries, weeds and vines, furnishing food and cover for a host of wildlife. With the clearing of the timber and more and more intense cultivation of the land, these fences offered refuges where the quail, the cottontail rabbit and dozens of other birds and animals learned to live with civilization.

There is also a final notation that "Many an undesirable citizen left town riding on a rail" - a reminder that the "rail" in question is not a railroad, as some modern listeners assume.

Modern "stack rail" fence components are available from lumber/fence companies, recommended for rocky soils where posthole digging is to be avoided.

Photo credit: Flickr user jesca1ia.

Fooling rattlesnakes

To mask their odor from rattlesnakes, California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew on sloughed-off snake skin and smear it on their fur, according to a new study. The act most likely persuades the predators that another snake, not a squirrel, is in the area.

"To our knowledge this is the first case where [this idea] has been tested systematically and shown to have an anti-predator function—protecting the squirrel from rattlesnake predation," said study lead author Barbara Clucas.

Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis, said she first noted this behavior in 2002. She saw rock squirrels at Caballo Lake State Park in New Mexico licking themselves to apply chewed snake skin to their flanks, tails, and rear ends, which gave them the pungent, musky scent of a rattlesnake. In 2003 she saw California ground squirrels at Lake Solano County Park in California doing the same thing.

Her team's study of the squirrels appeared in the November issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.


Found at Neatorama. Original source here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/40445561.html

Fossil of a four-legged snake

Found... in a museum!

Fossil-hunters have found several extinct snakes with stunted hind legs, and modern boas and pythons still have a pair of little spurs. “But no snake has ever been found with four legs. This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”

Martill called the creature Tetrapodophis: four-legged snake. “This little animal is the Archaeopteryx of the squamate world,” he says. (Squamates are the snakes and lizards.)

This finding has substantial implications regarding the evolution of snakes.  More details at Ed Yong's incomparable Not Exactly Rocket Science blog at National Geographic.

Epigraphy on the Taikhar Chuluu in central Mongolia

The large rock pictured above (the Taikhar Chuluu) is covered with a variety of scripts which have been added by visitors over a series of millennia.  Here is an English translation from the Hungarian blog mongγol bičig & manju bithe:

Mongolia is full of interesting and beautiful places. In the central region, along the Tamir river stands the Taikhar chuluu.

This is a huge rock, there is nothing similar in the neighborhood. The stone itself is not as interesting as the inscriptions on it and the legends connected with it. Long time ago the rock was called dai gürü. Dai is a Chinese loan-word (大) meaning big, while gürü means rock in Mongolian. The modern name Taikhar is a compound of these two words (the changes d>t and g>k are absolutely normal in Mongolian, and a similar change of vowels is also acceptable). Therefore it is unnecessary to add to the name chuluu which means ‘stone’, because this would mean something like “Big rock rock” (as if one said “CD disk”). The rock has a large number of inscriptions. Unfortunately, our contemporaries also leave their scraps on it, and as a consequence several old inscriptions are disappearing. Among the graffitis there are many very old ones, some written in the Turkic age [A.D. 6th century].

The Turkic inscriptions are not just epigraphic relics, their importance goes far beyond this. In fact, they attest that the rock was revered already in the Turkic period, and this tradition was uninterruptedly transferred to the Mongols. Thus the Turkic, Mongolian and other inscriptions prove the cultural relations and continuity between the various people following each other.

There are several Mongolian inscriptions on the rock, unfortunately the majority are near to illegibility. I can not present you a large inscription, simply because I could not decypher any longer one. However, I can show two shorter one. They are not very exciting, but are worth a look.

Beginning of the inscription: oṃ sayin amuγulang boltuγai, that is: “Om, let there be peace!” I cannot completely understand the continuation of the text.

Another inscription: qamuγ amitan burqan-u qutuγ olqu boltuγai, that is: “May every living being reach the holiness of the Buddha!” These two short examples attst that the cult of the place continued after the arrival of Buddhism. This is also documented by a large number of Tibetan graffitis on the rock.

Of course, the rock itself did not come here by itself, the legend says. Long time ago there lived a hero here called Bökebilig (“Strong and wise”). Suddenly a large snake started to come out from under the earth. Bökebilig did not like this, and he pushed back the snake from where it came, and then he closed the mouth of its cave with this rock which has been standing here ever since. Not far from the rock there is a small mountain called Altan sandali (“Golden throne”), of which tradition says that Bökebilig took a rest on it, while washing his hands in the nearby Tamir river. 

Once you’re here, check the nearby graves with a number of so-called “deer stones”. They indicate that there was no cultural continuity between the original people erecting the “deer stones” and the later one digging the graves, because the “deer stones” were simply used for building material.

As their name shows, “deer stones” were mostly decorated with deers, but on a grave near Altan sandali we could also find a very special stone with horses instead of deers. Fortunately, it has survived the centuries in an excellent condition. Here you are.

There are only a handful of “horse stones” around, while you can still see hundreds of “deer stones”. It is still a question why these stones were carved and erected. Perhaps we will resolve this mystery on a day, but one thing is sure: it is worth looking around in Mongolia!

 I find this whole subject fascinating.  The rock itself doesn't look to me like a glacial erratic; perhaps some reader here can provide an opinion re its formation.  Regarding the history that it was used by a giant to crush a snake when the ground began to move in waves, I wonder if this part of the world is seismically active.

The petroglyphs are elaborate and beautiful; there are additional photos of them and of the ancient epigraphs at mongγol bičig & manju bithe.

A hat tip to "Studiolum" at  Poemas del rio Wang for locating this interesting item and providing the translation.

Divertimento #131

The fourth "gifdump."  Lets start with a funny one:

LoCH NeSs MoNSter drOWNS iNNocENt WoMan

Just a little girl watching TV.  With her 12-foot pet snake.

You do the interview while I get out of this lifejacket.

You can lead a horse to water, but...

Husband wakes wife from nap, instantly regrets it.

Bread slicer.

Flying fish successfully evades underwater predator.

Did she treat him to lunch?  Or not...?

Impressive domino spiral.

Desert camouflage (Eritrea).

How patellas ("kneecaps") work.

Dog startles puppies, instantly regrets it.

Basketball dunk, through the legs - twice.

Alleged to be the world's largest single firework.  And a synchronized firework.

Labeled "feeding time," but may have some other explanation.

Using a drone to replace a lightbulb - a technique recommended by lightbulb manufacturers.

Home-made falafel. (from the GIF recipe subreddit, btw)

Secret drawer.

Handfeeding a nautilus.

Good thing this bicyclist didn't back up.

Impressive scarecrow.

Monitor lizard attacks a "snake."

Remoras on a whale shark.

Milling a sprocket.

Portugal national team heading a soccer ball.

Snake easily climbs a smooth-barked tree.

Extreme scooter sport.  Why am I not surprised to see a spectator in a wheelchair?

Heckler of street performer gets what he deserves.

Bicycle accident.  And preparing for the beach cyclocross.  And awesome balance on a bicycle.

How not to cope with burning alcohol. x3.

Riding a motorbike on a railroad track.  (note there is now a WCGW subreddit)

Do Not STRADDLE the pullback-rope of a rope swing.

Unusual soccer trick.

Just too weird to explain.

Lighting methane on a frozen lake.

How a long dog gets off a narrow ledge.

Base jumping at Kjerag Cliff (Norway).

The start of a homing pigeon race.

HMB while I jump over this massive rolling hay bale.

Reversible sequins.

Surprise present.  Have a hankie or tissue ready...

The embedded images today come from A Selection of the Getty's Open Content Program, in The Public Domain Review.  Details and provenance of the images at the link.

Unimaginable courage

Camisea, 11 June, 1981:
"It was already dark when I was called to the medic's station in the big camp. Up on the plateau between the two rivers, woodsmen had been felling trees, barefoot as usual, and one of them had been bitten by a snake. Snakes had never been seen anywhere near chain saws, because the noise and the exhaust fumes drive the snakes deep into the jungle, but this man had suddenly been bitten twice in the foot. He had dropped his chain saw and just caught a glimpse of the snake before it disappeared into the underbrush; it was a chuchupe. Usually this snake's bite causes cardiac arrest and stops breathing in less than a minute, and cases in which a person has survived a bite longer than seven or eight minutes without treatment are almost unknown. Our camp with the doctor and the antivenom serum was twenty minutes away. The man, so I was told by someone who had been working next to him, had stood motionless for a few seconds, thinking hard. Then he had picked up the chain saw, which had stalled when it hit the ground, pulled the cord to start it, the way you pull an outboard motor, and had sawn off his foot above the ankle. I saw the man - his whole body was gray. He was alive, perfetly collected, and very calm. Before they took him to the doctor, the others had tied off his leg in three places with lianas: below his crotch, below his knee, and above the stump, and had twisted the lianas with sticks to make a tight tourniquet. They had stuck a kind of moss on the stump to stop the bleeding. I had a plane readied to fly him out to Lima the next day."

Blogged not because of the violence or the grotesqueness of the event, but because of my jaw-dropping admiration for this woodcutter and the courage it must have taken for him to face his imminent mortality and deal with it in such a dramatic fashion.

From Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless - his notebooks about the filming of Fitzcarraldo at the headwaters of the Amazon.