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Snakes have a wide diversity of skin coloration patterns which are often related to behavior, such as the tendency to have to flee from predators. Snakes that are at a high risk of predation tend to be plain, or have longitudinal stripes, providing few reference points to predators, thus allowing the snake to escape without being noticed.
Visual, olfactory, auditory, biochemical, and behavioral modalities of mimicry have been documented in vertebrates. [1] [2] There are few well-studied examples of mimicry in vertebrates. [1] Still, many of the basic types of mimicry apply to vertebrates, especially among snakes.
The common kingsnake is known to be immune to the venom of other snakes and does eat rattlesnakes, but it is not necessarily immune to the venom of snakes from different localities. [10] Kingsnakes such as the California kingsnake can exert twice as much constriction force relative to body size as rat snakes and pythons. Scientists believe that ...
These differences in diet and foraging behavior between coastal and inland snake populations suggest that the species has undergone microevolution. Due to dietary and foraging differences between variants of T. elegans , it can be inferred that coastal populations have filled a niche in the environment that allows them to no longer rely on fish ...
The eastern indigo snake was first described by John Edwards Holbrook in 1842. For many years the genus Drymarchon was considered monotypic with one species, Drymarchon corais, with 12 subspecies, until the early 1990s when Drymarchon corais couperi was elevated to full species status according to the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, in their official names list.
For example, when predators avoid a mimic that imperfectly resembles a coral snake, the mimic is sufficiently protected. [ 26 ] [ 27 ] [ 28 ] Convergent evolution is an alternative explanation for why coral reef fish have come to resemble each other; [ 29 ] [ 30 ] the same applies to benthic marine invertebrates such as sponges and nudibranchs .
Anti-predator adaptation in action: the kitefin shark (a–c) and the Atlantic wreckfish (d–f) attempt to prey on hagfishes. First, the predators approach their potential prey. Predators bite or try to swallow the hagfishes, but the hagfishes have already projected jets of slime (arrows) into the predators' mouths.
Tail vibration behavior in rattlesnakes is somewhat different from tail vibration in other snakes because rattlesnakes hold their tails vertically when tail vibrating, whereas other snakes hold the tail horizontally. Presumably, this is because the rattlesnake rattle produces its own noise, which would be diminished by the exterior of the ...