![]() "But now it's not hot at all and the new king cobra discovered this and wedged its head in between the lightbulb and the light fixture and managed to push itself out."Ī visitor managed to capture the escape on video, where a distressed person can be heard asking: "Is it safe to be here?"Ī staff member calmly replied: "No, but we're working on it." "The old light was so hot that no snake wanted to get close," Wahlstrom said. He explained that the escaped snake had an advantage over previous tenants: staff had recently replaced the lamp at the top of the enclosure with a low-energy bulb. The terrarium has housed king cobras for about 15 years, but it only took the new tenant a few days to find a way out, Wahlstrom told AFP. They have also brought in special cameras designed to inspect sewage pipes, in order to search the nooks and crannies out of reach. Staff have spread out flour to try and track the slithery fugitive and sticky traps have been deployed. The snake has now been renamed Houdini after the famed escape artist, said Jonas Wahlstrom, director of the Skansen Aquarium. He had only been brought to the zoo a few days earlier. The snake, named Sir Vas (Sir Hiss), escaped on Saturday through a lamp fixture in a terrarium and was believed to be somewhere in an inner ceiling. ![]() STOCKHOLM: A Swedish zoo has been partially shut down after a king cobra staged an impressive escape from its enclosure at the weekend, with staff on Monday still searching for the venomous vagrant. Biotropica, published online Apdoi: 10.1111/btp.King cobras, native to South and Southeast Asia, are the world's longest venomous snake. Observations and description of a rare escape mechanism in a snake: Cartwheeling in Pseudorabdion longiceps (Cantor, 1847) (Squamata, Colubridea). The team’s paper appears today in the journal Biotropica.Įvan Seng Huat Quah et al. “We believe that this behavior may be more widespread in other small snake species, especially members of the subfamily Calamariinae, but the lack of records is probably an artifact of the challenges in detecting and observing these secretive species.” “We were excited when we successfully captured images that documented cartwheeling behavior in this species,” Dr. In addition to identifying a complex defense mechanism used by the dwarf reed snake, the authors also provide insights into the kinetic abilities of snakes. “Some snakes also use passive rolling, but we observed that the dwarf reed snake performs active cartwheeling by repeatedly launching the coils of its body into the air and rolling down inclines.” Evan Seng Huat Quah, a researcher at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah, and colleagues. ![]() “Typical defense mechanisms that small snakes use against predators include fleeing, camouflage, coloration, odors, death-feigning, and intimidation,” said lead author Dr. Individuals of this species have been observed a number of times to cartwheel in an attempt to evade capture, particularly if they are placed on a smooth substrate. Some specimens may have a pale yellow collar at the back of the head. Its color varies from black, brown to reddish-brown and it is iridescent in strong sunlight or camera flash. It ranges from southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore to the islands of Borneo, Sumatra and Sulawesi. ![]() One of the smallest reed snakes, it inhabits mainly forested areas hiding under logs, rocks or leaf litter. The dwarf reed snake is a nocturnal snake species in the subfamily Calamariinae of the family Colubridae. Cartwheeling behavior of the dwarf reed snake ( Pseudorabdion longiceps).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |