The chinese Year of the Snake has special resonance for me and for many of my colleagues – based on the amount of celebratory email messages that have flooded my inbox to mark the prominent role of our favourite animals in 2013 as a snake biologist. It is about snakes that led Chinese culture to allot them a special status as one of the 12 animal symbols in their zodiac so I am led to ponder: what?
One clue into the snake’s status arises from the expected characteristics of individuals created within the of the Snake year. The web sites we consulted about this topic had been contradictory – one site said that such everyone was ‘gregarious, introverted, ample and dangerous’, a combination that is somewhat bewildering!
Nevertheless, many internet sites agreed upon one trait: that snake-sign folks are slightly oversexed. And, having invested almost all of profession investigating the intercourse everyday lives of serpents across the global globe, i could easily see a foundation for that link.
Until quite recently, we knew hardly any about snake reproductive behavior. That which we did understand generally speaking came from anecdotal findings, mostly involving a few snakes intertwined while they slithered throughout the lawn.
Indeed, the sight of two big red-bellied black colored snakes involved with frenetic wrestling matches is among the great spectacles associated with the Australian bush in springtime. The scarlet bellies regarding the snakes – concealed in their activities that are normal stick out considerably as the snakes raise their minds well over the ground, intertwining their health because they sway and topple back again to the floor.
Usually misinterpreted as being a courtship display, or as actual mating, these dazzling ‘dances’ are actually ritualised combat bouts between competing males. Although seldom reported – most likely because snakes are so secretive – we now realize that combat behavior happens into the males of numerous Australian snakes.
Exactly like black colored snakes, male tiger snakes and copperheads take part in extended battles.
Therefore perform some men of several smaller elapid (venomous) snakes, such as for instance small-eyed snakes and whipsnakes.More significantly, males of some of the python species that are largest also take part in titanic battles. In tropical Queensland, men of two of Australia’s biggest snake types – scrub pythons (which grow to at the very least four metres long) and carpet pythons (to at the very least three metres) – fight their rivals for access to reproductive females.
The constricting that is formidable among these giant snakes, and their willingness to bite along with wrestle – unlike all the venomous snakes – produces an memorable knockdown, dragged out battle. It’s particularly impressive whenever these battles happen in the roof area of your dwelling. Pythons love such places, which offer shelter, also access to delicious rats and possums. The bashing and crashing of a python battle over the home-owners’ minds can seem like a miniature Armageddon.
The males of many other snake species pursue very different tactics: focusing on making love, not war unlike the combative species. They tolerate their rivals, and devote their efforts to courtship in place of all-out warfare.
Males typically usually do not develop since big as females within these more amorous species, presumably because larger human body size does not wow the girls – though it assists a whole lot in beating a competing male in a combat bout.
Remarkably, we could see this correlation between intimate size dimorphism (for example. males larger or smaller compared to females) and systems that are matingmales battle each other, or they don’t) also within split populations of wide-ranging types.
Probably the most example that is spectacular the carpeting python.
While these large snakes are observed over the majority of the Australian mainland, in various areas they form fairly recognisable color varieties (usually assigned to various subspecies).As already noted, the monster carpeting pythons of tropical Queensland take part in ferocious battles between men. However their southern cousins — the elegant diamond pythons associated with Sydney area — ignore other men, rather investing the mating period in aggregations around a receptive feminine.
Although snake courtship itself is a rather restrained and mild event, finding five or six giant pythons nestled together within your roof room can be almost because worrying for a property owner as having two aggro male snakes beating one another up within the exact same area. But, at the least when it comes to the diamond pythons, the males are smaller compared to girls – generally there try this site is certainly not quite because snake that is much to manage whenever you poke the head through the manhole cover to analyze the sound!
We understand a complete lot less in regards to the sex lives of Chinese snakes than of Australian types. It’s most likely reasonable to express that in Asia, snakes have now been more crucial as social and culinary things than as research subjects, at the least until recently.
It’s an acceptable bet, though, that oriental serpents wake up to numerous of the identical shenanigans because their counterparts from downunder, also it ended up being findings of those red-blooded battles and passionate dalliances that probably stimulated very very early Chinese scholars to add the snake amongst their animal zodiac.
Prof Rick Shine is Professor in Evolutionary Biology in the University of Sydney’s School of Biological Sciences.