By Kacey Deamer, Staff Writer | June 6, 2017 01:35pm ET
When cave-dwelling Cuban boas fancy a meal, they band together to hunt for bats by concealing themselves along the cave entrance and forming a wall of deadly snakes before launching their coordinated strikes, according to a new study on the rare occurrence of snakes hunting in packs.
Though snakes are sociable, researchers have largely considered the reptiles to be solitary in their hunting and eating. But these new observations of the Cuban boas' pack-hunting offer evidence that some snakes hunt in groups. Of the 3,650 snake species known in the world, only a few have been observed hunting in the wild, according to the scientists.
And coordination among snakes to catch prey has never been proved, said study author Vladimir Dinets, a professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, who specializes in animal behavior.
"It is possible that coordinated hunting is not uncommon among snakes, but it will take a lot of very patient field research to find out," Dinets said in a statement.
Read more
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!