Vipers, sedentary and slow, until it matters most. But how fast can vipers strike? And how do other snakes compare? We check out a couple of papers answering these questions this fortnight as well as checking in on another Species of the Bi-week. FULL REFERENCE LIST AVAILABLE AT: herphighlights.podbean.com

Main Paper References:
Higham, TE, RW Clark, CE Collins, MD Whitford, and GA Freymiller. 2017. “Rattlesnakes Are Extremely Fast and Variable When Striking at Kangaroo Rats in Nature: Three-Dimensional High-Speed Kinematics at Night.” Scientific Reports 7: 40412.
Penning, DA, B Sawvel, and BR Moon. 2016. “Debunking the Viper’s Strike: Harmless Snakes Kill a Common Assumption.” Biology Letters 12 (3): 20160011.
Species of the Bi-Week:
Wickramasinghe, LJM, DR Vidanapathirana, HKD Kandambi, RA Pyron, and N Wickramasinghe. 2017. “A New Species of Aspidura Wagler, 1830 (Squamata: Colubridae: Natricinae) from Sri Pada Sanctuary (Peak Wilderness), Sri Lanka.” Zootaxa 4347 (2): 275–92.
Other Mentioned Papers/Studies:
Devan-Song, A, P Martelli, D Dudgeon, P Crow, G Ades, and NE Karraker. 2016. “Is Long-Distance Translocation an Effective Mitigation Tool for White-Lipped Pit Vipers (Trimeresurus Albolabris) in South China?” Biological Conservation 204: 212–20.
O’Hanlon, SJ, A Rieux, RA Farrer, GM Rosa, B Waldman, A Bataille, TA Kosch, et al. 2018. “Recent Asian Origin of Chytrid Fungi Causing Global Amphibian Declines.” Science 360 (6389): 621–27.
Rundus, A. S., Owings, D. H., Joshi, S. S., Chinn, E. and Giannini, N. (2007). Ground squirrels
use an infrared signal to deter rattlesnake predation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 104, 14372–
14376.
Schraft, H. A., & Clark, R. W. (2017). Kangaroo rats change temperature when investigating rattlesnake predators. Physiology & behavior, 173, 174-178.
Other Links/Mentions:
Videos from Higham et al. 2017
Snake miss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBEp2LtQwZ8&feature=youtu.be
Rat escapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCxvIk8wS_8&feature=youtu.be

Rattlesnake falls down hill from Barbour and Clark 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ0EmVnDHkE

Music:
Intro/outro – Treehouse by Ed Nelson
Other Music – The Passion HiFi, www.thepassionhifi.com