Robotic Squirrels Battle It Out With Rattlesnakes 125
Hugh Pickens writes "Alasdair Wilkins writes that when a squirrel encounters a rattlesnake in the wild, it does something very peculiar to survive its brush with the predator — something is so peculiar that scientists are building robotic squirrels just to try to understand the behavior. A live squirrel does two things when it sees a rattlesnake. It starts moving its tail in a flagging motion and actually heats up the temperature of its tail. Because rattlesnakes can see in the infrared wavelengths, they should be able to see both the tail move and heat up. The question is which of these two signals is important and just what message it's supposed to send to the rattlesnake. To that end, engineers at UC Davis have built robosquirrels, which allow the biologists to simulate the two squirrel behaviors one a time and the research so far suggests it's the heated tail, not the flagging motion, that the snake responds to, making it one of the first known examples of infrared communication between two distinct species. 'Snakes will rarely strike at a flagging adult squirrel — and if they do they almost always miss,' says Rulon Clark, assistant professor of biology at San Diego State University and an expert on snake behavior. 'In some cases, it seems the rattlesnakes just decide it's best to cut their losses after dealing with these confusing critters,' adds Wilkins, 'as sometimes the snakes just leave the area completely after encountering these flagging, tail-heating squirrels.'"
Squirrelzilla (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps these robocritters can deal with the plague of our snake-in-the-grass politicians.
I, for one, welcome our new hot tailed rodent overlords.
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God damn you, Michael Bay.
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I can see a movie starring the likes of Steven Seagal/Bruce Willis/Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger being pitched to Hollywood execs right now...
(overheard near Sly Stallone talking to someone on his cell phone)...
"What?!? What do you mean the script was leaked for Expendables 3?!? How the fuck do they know about the robot squirrels!?! Dammit, heads are gonna roll!"
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...starring the likes of Steven Seagal/Bruce Willis/Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger
Geriatric brigade vs. Squirrels? My money is on the tree rats.
Isn't it obvious? (Score:2)
The question is which of these two signals is important and just what message it's supposed to send to the rattlesnake.
The most important message: Dinner is served!
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
Natasha thinks... (Score:5, Funny)
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Put a chrome grill in his mouth. With diamond rim shades and a Gucci scarf, squirrel would be fly.
I guess two reasons ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I guess two reasons ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or it could be that the tail wagging helps get the blood flowing through the tail and causes the tail muscles to generate heat through use...
Re:I guess two reasons ... (Score:5, Informative)
That suggests the tail is being heated up to make it a more inviting target and the movement is there to ensure that the snake never get a chance to actually strike (which presumably would still kill the squirrel unless it can cast off the tail/shutdown all blood flow before the poison makes its way into the core organs). I assume the tail can be moved far more quickly and erratically than the squirrels main body mass.
It sounds to me more like a matador using a cloak as a target for the bull. Something to draw the attention in a way which encourages an attack (or at least preparation for an attack) at the point which has least chance of causing damage.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Thats what I was thinking. Also.... what kind of a bite is it going to get on a tail? Tails are bony and thin. A good strike might break the tail right off.... and if it didn't, there just isn't much space to leave poison in.
In fact, some poisonous snakes have been shown to not use their fangs in some situations, like defensive striking. The studies I have seen in the past theorised that the snake was protecting its fangs. Think what could happen if they got a good chomp, sinking their fangs straight on int
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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> I learned several things from that incident.
1. don't grab snake with bare hands?
2. don't denigrate your neighbor who was smart enough not to try to grab snake with bare hands?
3. ?
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Hmm, I'm guessing:
3. Always scream like a girl when something bites your bible bump.
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Except that the heat, which a rattlesnake perceives, would not be in the fluff but in the body of the tail.
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That suggests the tail is being heated up to make it a more inviting target and the movement is there to ensure that the snake never get a chance to actually strike (which presumably would still kill the squirrel unless it can cast off the tail/shutdown all blood flow before the poison makes its way into the core organs).
Most animals have a much higher tolerance (by bodyweight) for venom than us puny humans do.
The really interesting thing is that studies show this tolerance varies between populations of the same animal.
Squirrels that live in poisonous snake country are naturally selected for tolerance.
Other animals (like badgers or humans) can gain tolerance over time as a result of repeated exposure to venom.
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Yep, a countermeasure. Obviously squirrels couldn't evolve an IR flare dispenser, so this is the next best thing.
Not much to a squirrel's tail other than fluff to bite on anyways, so the odds of the snake striking anything vital are pretty slim.
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Indeed. I wouldn't call this a communication method, but an active defense measure. If you insist on calling this a form of communication, then I suggest "biting" and such be as well.
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Its not a message, its a decoy (Score:5, Interesting)
A live squirrel does two things when it sees a rattlesnake. It starts moving its tail in a flagging motion and actually heats up the temperature of its tail. Because rattlesnakes can see in the infrared wavelengths, they should be able to see both the tail move and heat up. The question is which of these two signals is important and just what message it's supposed to send to the rattlesnake.
Its not sending a messages. Its presenting a decoy target.
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A live squirrel does two things when it sees a rattlesnake. It starts moving its tail in a flagging motion and actually heats up the temperature of its tail. Because rattlesnakes can see in the infrared wavelengths, they should be able to see both the tail move and heat up. The question is which of these two signals is important and just what message it's supposed to send to the rattlesnake.
Its not sending a messages. Its presenting a decoy target.
It is a secret message, you're supposed to decode it with the a snake decoder ring. I used my pet snake's ring and it says: Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
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Re:Its not a message, its a decoy (Score:5, Funny)
Its not sending a messages. Its presenting a decoy target.
The message is "Look, over here! No, over here! Hah, made you miss! You suck! That's right, slither away with your tail between your legs! Hahahaha, you don't have legs! Loser!"
It's just that at normal speed instead of squirrel speed, you can't hear the trash talk that accompanies the flagging.
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Its not sending a messages. Its presenting a decoy target.
The message is "Look, over here! No, over here! Hah, made you miss! You suck! That's right, slither away with your tail between your legs! Hahahaha, you don't have legs! Loser!"
It's just that at normal speed instead of squirrel speed, you can't hear the trash talk that accompanies the flagging.
So squirrels are the world's first trolls? I can dig it
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Predator/prey relationships are fascinating biology, psychology, physics, chemistry, optics, acoustics, and many soft and hard sciences in the mix. Add the drama and sex inherent to the systems, and you have a recipe for endless fun and entertainment. A lot applies to human relationshps, too.
Check out Wolfgang Wickler's "mimicry" book for a lot of fascinating study and beautiful illustrations to learn a lot about the the biological world and even some lessons about human mating. The idea that a deadlier poi
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It may be a little more complicated. Many years ago in a wildland area in southern California I came on half a dozen or so ground squirrels who had discovered a rattlesnake and were driving it from their feeding area. The snake would attempt to move away and then two or three of the smaller squirrels would dash up and nip it (counting coup, I guess). The snake would then whip around and attempt a short strike that would miss, coil, wait a bit and then attempt to flee again. This repeated itself for some
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Usually a snake's vision is really only adequate to detect motion - so the higher temperature spoofs the thermal detection, and the shaking spoofs the visual. I'd say it's more that than anything else - squirrels aren't exactly mute and do a good job of shouting out about danger... so the use of the tail to signal would be secondary if anything.
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Its not sending a messages. Its presenting a decoy target.
Presenting a decoy target IS sending messages. Unless you can think of a way to "present a decoy target" without sending specific, tailored information to the incoming threat's sensors...
WTFBBQ (Score:2)
Re:WTFBBQ (Score:4, Funny)
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I think the main point of the article is robots are cool.
... except the tail part.
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easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Big warmed things tend to trigger the "too big to eat" response in snakes. That is, as long as they are moving. Stationary dead but still warm prey, may be looked upon as "luck, I found myself a free meal".
Most poisonous snakes tend to either not inject venom at all, or tone down the dose considerably when attacking as a defensive movement. Hence, even if the snake seems to miss, it might actually have hit and bitten, but no big damage is done. Making yourself too big to eat is an advantage even if it comes to a fight for the squirrel. For the snake, it makes no sense to waste valuable poison on something you can't eat, so just a warning dose will be more economical.
The squirrel can counter-attack and bite the snake behind the head if it attacks the big moving warm thing just next to the tail. There is plenty of evidence on youtube they do just that.
It will take quite some robotic squirrels before you can statistically prove these things, but I'm fairly certain most of these logical assumptions will be backed up by numbers.
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The squirrel can counter-attack and bite the snake behind the head if it attacks the big moving warm thing just next to the tail. There is plenty of evidence on youtube they do just that.
So you're saying that a squirrel is really a small mongoose?
(Eyes furry rodent hanging out at the bird feeder with a bit more respect.)
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Except that squirrels eat nuts and mongoose eat snakes. Otherwise spot on.
respect the squirrels (Score:1)
(Eyes furry rodent hanging out at the bird feeder with a bit more respect.)
I honestly think that the squirrels around my house are smarter than my dogs (of course that's not saying much). And there are sooooo many crazy squirrel stories I could tell...
Suffice to say, once one of the squirrels stole my coffee, I had very little trouble with choosing my subject for an ethology project.
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The only snake I have with thermal receptors is a little python.
He usually has pretty good aim, even in the dark. However, after he squeezes the prey for a few minutes... it often seems like it's too cold, and he has a very hard time finding the rodent. My heat-pit-less snakes never have this problem - maybe their smell is considerably better, to compensate? Or their physical (touch) heat sensing is better. Hmm.
Not sure if that's common, or if he's just extra special, though...
A python has a bunch of heat p
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I'm glad a fellow snake owner commented on this - my first reaction to the story was why don't they just go chat with some people who feed snakes regularly rather than rush off an build robotic squirrels. Obviously building robotic things are a priority it just seems there's probably more interesting robotic things to build. Anyhow, as far as I know, rattle snakes eyesight is far from their strongest sense and it would, in general, be odd for any land-based snake to rely on eyesight very much at all. Mine r
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Because statements from snake owners are not scientific evidence. Sure, they can be used to help build the hypothesis, but not to prove/disprove it (which is what the robots were for).
You should go bone up on the scientific method, seems you forgot some of it :P
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Simulation whether with robots or simple models have never been as useful as they might be - a small change to a parameter can yield very unstable results. No problem with drawing in expertise to refine hypotheses, whether they are selling snake oil or not
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Nitpick mode on:
It's not 'poisonous', it's 'venomous'
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Lets also not forget that most snake's vision is only acute enough to detect motion effectively - there are exceptions of course. So the tale shaking couples with the heat to draw the snake's attention away from the body with two senses.
Where's Jeff Minter when you need him? (Score:4, Insightful)
Article title sounds like one of his games.
The squirrels are even cleverer than that (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, it turns out that the squirrels (North American ground squirrels, in this case) are even cleverer than that, as the same team at UC Davis have previously shown. When confronted with a snake with infrared sensing organs (i.e. a pit viper, of which rattlesnakes are one variety), they engorge their tails with blood to send that infrared decoy signal. However, when they meet up with other kinds of non-infrared sensitive snakes (e.g. gopher snakes), they only flag with their tails; they don't use the infrared trick as well:
Squirrels wield a hot secret weapon [newscientist.com]
Why the difference? Presumably because it costs energy to send blood to your tail, where it then cools as it sends out its infrared signal. Thus, in evolutionary terms, it only makes sense to incur that cost if it has an advantage. Since gopher snakes can't sense in the infrared, why bother?
Of course, with respect to the current findings, it suggests that both flagging and infrared decoy measures are important to a ground squirrel, not just the infrared part. Otherwise, why would they bother flagging? Perhaps just because they have fun annoying snakes ...
And while the snakes might come off as just dumb reptiles in this story, let's not forget that those infrared sensing organs are pretty amazing as well. They have limited spatial resolution, but extraordinary temperature resolution, down to 0.001K. Indeed, once upon a time as a PhD student, I calculated that if you strapped a rattlesnake to the back of a 4 metre infrared telescope (!), it could detect the signal from Eta Carinae, one of the brightest infrared stars in the sky. Strap on thousands of rattlesnakes and count when each one rattled its tail, and you could take images :-)
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Has anyone given thought to attaching rattlesnakes to sharks to assist with laser targeting? It would be a wonderfully evil contraption.
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Strap on thousands of rattlesnakes and count when each one rattled its tail, and you could take images :-)
It's called the Snake Kicking Array, they're still trying to figure out where to build it. Last I heard they wanted to build it in some desert in Australia or South Africa just in case the snakes escape.
Re:The squirrels are even cleverer than that (Score:5, Funny)
I heard about that! Snakes on a plain...
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I heard about that! Snakes on a plain...
Bah-ha-ha-ha!!!! Oh, my sides hurt!! thank you.
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Re:The squirrels are even cleverer than that (Score:5, Informative)
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not only that, but the blob of heat looks much bigger, as in "maybe this is actually a coyote and too big to eat" size.
By the way, the infrared jammer of heat-seeking missiles doesn't quite work like that. The missiles (older designs) have some kind of rotating "optical chopper" used to increase the signal to noise ratio of a point target and help with angular control. The IR detectors themselves were only one pixel or so. The jammer is designed with special knowledge (ahem) of the particular control syste
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And then the bar closed..
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Isn't it easier to "send blood flow" to a moving limb? Try warming up your hands or feet on a cold day without flexing them: it really does help to move them. Also, just thinking about the body movements, I think an animal that already has some motion going can dodge or jump more easily than one standing completely still. That tail gives some leverage to twist or turn the _rest_ of the body, doesn't it?
Did you publish the rattlesnake IR astronomy theory? That kind of analysis is one of the delights of scien
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Doesn't apply here... because we can't voluntarily attempt to change blood flow like that, we have to do it via motion of the limb or such.
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I have a voluntary attempt to change blood flow like that... in my pants!
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No you don't. It's involuntary.
I assure you it's entirely voluntary (Score:1)
It would only be involuntary if I didn't like it.
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Those little blue pills work wonders, don't they?
...or so I've heard.
.
.
.
Yeah, I've definitely heard that!
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How does the squirrel know which species of snakes use IR and which don't?
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It could be that pumping extra blood into the decoy is an extra risk - eg, a successful strike from the snake would result in more blood loss.
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Snakes generally do not put much, if at all, venom into a defensive strike against something it thinks is too big to eat (which is what the heated tail tricks them into thinking). Humans are stupid and clumsy so they usually get bit several times in an encounter.
At least these are my understandings.
Unusual (Score:4, Funny)
I find it odd that a snake in the grass wouldn't stike out at some hot tail.
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You must work for BBC Life or you're a spam bot^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H slashvertisement.
Is this trait unique to the Grey Squirrel? (Score:1)
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The squirrels in question aren't the grey or red ones that run around in trees; they're ground squirrels, so things like marmots and prairie dogs at the big end and chipmunks at the small end.
I don't think regular grey tree squirrels are from the same genus. And I'm not 100% sure that all ground squirrels do this; the classic example of an infrared light sabre wielding species is the California ground squirrel.
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Yeah, the species studied is Spermophilus beecheyi, the California Ground Squirrel.
The grey squirrels in the US are Sciurus griseus (the Western Grey squirrel), Sciurus arizonensis (Arizona grey) and Sciurus carolinensis (the Eastern Grey squirrel), and the 'red' (more brownish) squirrels in the US are Sciurus niger (the fox squirrel, pretty much all over North America) and Tamiasciurus hudsonicus (red squirrel). The red squirrels in the UK are most likely Sciurus vulgaris (the Eurasian red squirrel) and t
Scientist Cockfight Gladiator Entertainment (Score:2)
Oh, come on. This is just a form of cockfighting thinly shrouded in a veil of "scientific experiment." The scientists just really want to watch and bet on the fights. Wait until the PETA folks hear about this!
It there a PETR for robots, cruelly forced into combat with vicious snakes, to entertain bloodthirsty humans?
Airlink wasn't very practical.. (Score:1)
When you've confirmed that IR link has been established, hit CTRL+P.
You still had to walk right over there.
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that's quite a leap you made, but i guess it makes sense!
Not what I was expecting (Score:1)
Sitting at work I read the subject "Robotic Squirrels Battle It Out With Rattlesnakes". My mind starts to race with cool images of robotic squirrels trashing some serious bad ass rattle snakes.
My hand shaking in anticipation I decide just this once to open up a post on slashdot when I should be working. Looking around I see the mindless drones tapping on their keyboards and I think to myself - after I read this the world will some how be different.
I then open the article and find that it's a robot squirrel
Who pays for this stuff? (Score:2)
While this topic makes for some fun and entertaining reading, I cannot help but wonder "who pays for this crap?" I recognize that there is value in humans exploring and understanding our world as well as the general pursuit of knowledge in all forms. However, I have seen a lot of very important research that fails to receive funding because there are simply higher priorities and so I wonder how something like this managed to get above the line where someone was willing to put time and money into it. Maybe t
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Newsflash: not everyone shares the same priorities.
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You are very correct. a lot of personal donations fund a lot of research targeted at those individuals personal priorities, but this is National Science Foundation money which usually means there is some sort of public interest being served by the research and since there are so many areas that rank high on the public interest for funding, the goal is usually to put the money towards those areas that will have the greatest impact for the public. I am just struggling to see great value in this research. Are
Save the robotic squirrels from this torture! (Score:1)
Their life is already bad enough...
"Now I lay me down to bed
Darkness won't engulf my head
I can see by infrared
How I hate the night"
--Marvin
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It's, "Now the world has gone to bed"
You were thinking of the first verse,
"Now I lay me down to sleep
Try to count electric sheep
Sweet dream wishes you can keep
How I hate the night"
I feel an award coming (Score:4, Interesting)
definitely ig Nobel worthy
Robot Squirrels...Rattlesnakes...Fighting? (Score:1)
Ah, good. Some good old fashioned nightmare fuel.
Sounds like a waste (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but what important problem are they trying to solve with this "research"?
How Does Their Behavior Change (Score:2)
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Feel my squirrely wrath!
No shit, Sherlock (Score:2)
The rattlesnake is a pit viper. IR is it's targeting flag. Holy shit, every herpetologist in the damned world knows this. Hell, every biologist in the world. Every fucking kid who likes snakes.
"Research" like this is only proving the known with an empirical test. Worthwhile in the textbook sense that some other animal has evolved a mechanism to defeat it, worthless as news concerning the snake.
re: flagging squirrels. (Score:1)
Common sense really (Score:2)
Meerkats do something similar except that they will form a line and undulate opposing each other, you up, neighbor down. This tends to confuse cobras and in the end the snakes look for an ea
Makes a little sense (Score:2)
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But according to the summary its the heat that elicits the snake's peculiar behavior, not the motion. That was the point of building robotic squirrels. The peculiarity being why the snake does not strike at this warm object.
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If I encounter a rattlesnake in the wild, I might be alarmed which would rais the tempature in my face. Does that mean I am communicating something to the snake Just because the snake can detect the thermal changes?
Yes. Yes, that's exactly what it means. You are communicating among other things, your level of fear and your size, upon which information the aforementioned serpent can determine your candidacy as prey and your threat to base its subsequent actions.
Think about this - would you doubt that the rattling snake communicates something to you, just because you can detect the air pressure changes? Communication need not be verbal nor even does it need to be intentional. Even simple colour combinations are suf