First ultra-detailed high-speed recordings of viper attacks

Thanks to a sequence of rapid videos, researchers now comprehend how poisonous serpents introduce their fangs into the creatures they hunt.

Ever since the early 1950s, scientists have documented via photography and video the instant a venomous snake strikes at its food. However, these assaults occur rapidly — occasionally in just 0.1 seconds — indicating that older camera models lacked the required speed to record all the details. Meanwhile, more current recordings of snake strikes in their habitat have frequently been restricted by reduced resolution and inadequate light, the researchers noted in their new publication.

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Researchers traveled to Venomworld in Paris to gain a deeper understanding of the ways various snake species attack their prey. This animal facility is where study co-author Remi Ksas and his team consistently extract venom from snakes and scorpions for pharmacological and medical purposes. While there, they fashioned artificial prey made from a muscle-mimicking medical gel and presented it to 36 types of venomous snakes while filming with several high-speed cameras.

While enticing the snakes to lash out, “I jumped back a few times,” confessed study co-author Silke Cleuren, a biologist from Monash University in Australia, within a statement.

Deinagkistrodon acutus, a type of viper native to Southeast Asia, swiftly strikes the fake victim.

Having recorded over 100 high-speed videos of 36 individual snake species attacking the fake prey, the investigators noticed common patterns in how these reptiles attack. The footage indicated that the bulk of vipers bit their target in approximately 0.1 seconds after lunging — more rapidly than the startle response of the majority of mammals, implying that their victim is unlikely to flee. Although some elapids — the group that encompasses the rough-scaled death adder (Acanthophis rugosus) and the Cape coral snake (Aspidelaps lubricus) — proved as swift as viperids, others needed more than 0.3 seconds to get to their prey.

Different snake groupings also utilized varied techniques for injecting their venom. Viperids launched a rapid strike from a curled-up position but occasionally struggled to achieve an optimal angle for their bites. If such a situation occurred, the viper would extract a fang from the prey and re-insert it in a more advantageous orientation prior to injecting its venom.

Elapids employed a more subtle tactic, inching closer to their prey to reduce the required lunge distance. They then slightly relaxed their jaws and bit down again several times, “probably to extend the venom’s flow into their prey,” the researchers detailed in the paper.