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Robotic Squirrels Battle It Out With Rattlesnakes
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.'"
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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!
#DeleteChrome
You just got Punk'd!
They also need to make a moose...
...welcome our flagging and/xor tail-heating robo squirrel overlords.
Sorry, it had to be said.
... the tail wagging evolved to attract strikes from snake species that target movement, while the "heating tail" evolved to attract strikes from species that target heat (like rattlers). Maybe in the daylight it will be the wagging that saves the squirrel. Perhaps, if the waggging has no effect on squirrel survival, it's a leftover from an earlier evolutionary stage, where the snakes didn't have the infrared targetting capability.
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.
This is one of the strangest things I've seen on Slashdot. Heated tail countermeasure causes snakes to give up. W T F.
I have had pet snakes for the last 10 years of various species, some with IR receptors.
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.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Article title sounds like one of his games.
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
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 :-)
I find it odd that a snake in the grass wouldn't stike out at some hot tail.
I'm guessing it's unlikely, but I was wondering if this trait can also be found in the Red Squirrel native to the UK - no rattle snake prey here, so I'm guessing this trait was never needed. Either that, or the Red's were so good at it, the rattle snakes were wiped out by starvation ;)
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?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
When you've confirmed that IR link has been established, hit CTRL+P.
You still had to walk right over there.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
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 that wags it's tail.
FAIL
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 there is a lot more value in this than I realize, but I am not seeing it.
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
definitely ig Nobel worthy
Ah, good. Some good old fashioned nightmare fuel.
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?
I'm sorry, but what important problem are they trying to solve with this "research"?
From the snake's point of view, I would expect that the flagging warm tail blurs the location of the squirrel. This would be more efficient for the squirrel to do than to actually jump around. The squirrel exhibiting this behavior is obviously aware of the snake and is facing it in a defensive stance. Therefore, the heat profile is mostly its head obscured by a mass of warm tail moving. I'm not sure how good a snake's depth perception is, but I imagine it isn't very good due to the lateral positioning of their eyes.
If you put rocket launchers on the squirrel? We must test it... FOR SCIENCE!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So you're saying the Grey Squirrel swishes its bushy tale?
Does it crinkle up its little nose?
Does it stick a nut between its toes?
"research so far suggests it's the heated tail, not the flagging motion"
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.
It would only be involuntary if I didn't like it.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
The fact is,ADULT California ground squirrels are largely immune to rattlesnake venom. What the squirrel is doing is flagging to attract attention away from their PUPS which have not yet developed immunity.
There are a lot of squirrels around here and no snakes with nuts.
Rattlesnakes have poor eyesight. A squirrels tail heating up has little actual skin/bone/tissue. A snake striking at the tail (which the squirrel is enticing the snake to bite with the movement) is a hell of a lot smaller target than the squirrels body. So a snake that expends it's venom in a missed strike is worthless.
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 easier meal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouvmwh29Hr8 about 2 minutes in you will see them doing it.
You can see a squirrel and rattler here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKIrwwBjhgs You get the impression the squirrel is trying to present itself as being larger than it is.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The tail heats up so that it's more obvious to the snake than the body, while it moves rapidly to reduce the chance of the fangs actually stabbing the flesh of the tail.
(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.