When danger strikes, you might fight, flee or freeze. But if you were a dwarf reed snake, your first instinct could be to roll.
Dwarf reed snakes, tiny snakes native to Southeast Asia, can launch into a series of cartwheel-like movements to spin out of sight when predators approach. A team of scientists first shared their observations of this unusual defense mechanism in 2023, but until recently, it was unclear how the snakes could move that way without veering off their course.
Now, a new team of researchers has analyzed the mechanics of the movement, and found that when rolling, the snakes can travel about four times faster than when slithering.
“The acrobatics involved in rolling are a fascinating example of how much snakes can accomplish with their limbless bodies,” said Yosuke Kojima, an ecologist at Toho University in Chiba, Japan, and lead author of the study, published recently in Current Biology.
To observe the snakes, Dr. Kojima and his team built a racetrack approximately 2.2 meters wide lined with high-speed cameras to capture the cartwheeling from multiple angles. Then, they gently tapped the participating snakes to startle them into rolling away.
The movement happened in three parts: First the dwarf reed snakes curved their bodies into the shape of a C, with their heads over their tails and pointing in the direction they wanted to go. Then, they lurched forward, tucking their heads down and throwing their bodies up, much like a person doing a front flip. At the end of each rotation, their tail hit the ground and bounced them upward again, setting the snake up for another turn.
Throughout the rolling movement, the snakes also kept their heads largely at the same level and pointing in the same direction, which helps to explain how they stay oriented despite the chaotic-looking motion.
“What surprised me most was how complex and coordinated the behavior is,” Dr. Kojima said. “It was only after watching the videos repeatedly and trying to picture the movement in three dimensions that I began to understand how the snakes moved their bodies.”
After the rapid rolls, most of the observed snakes dove into hiding places, both in the wild and on the track in the lab. Usually snakes’ defense behaviors involve hiding or fleeing, but never in quite this way.
“Evading danger seems to me like the most obvious potential benefit,” Jessica Tingle, a snake biologist at Brown, said of the dwarf reed snake. “It’s fast, but conspicuous, and most snakes tend not to make themselves conspicuous if they can help it.”
The dwarf reed snake is not the only species known to roll. In 2023, a related species known as the Malayan spinejaw snake, was also observed to be cartwheeling. Still, rolling isn’t either species’ primary way of moving from place to place — as far as scientists know, it’s only used as a response to threats. (Then there are animals like armadillos, hedgehogs and pangolins, who curl their bodies into a protective ball when frightened, a roll-up movement known as volvation.)
“It’s nice to be surprised by weird snake behavior occasionally,” said Frank Burbrink, a curator in the department of herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History. “It is truly remarkable and probably fairly arresting for any predators that encounter these little guys.”
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