Fast Food, Snake-Style

The glory of placing a phone call to the local pizza joint and having oven fresh deliciousness brought directly to our front door never gets old. But in the matter of having food find its way to us, the tentacled water snake totally steals our lunch money.

Food in 30 minutes or less? Puh-lease. The snake is able to bewilder its lunch into swimming directly onto the service platter that is its gaping maw. And it’s so adroit at making this happen that ultra high speed photography is required to even observe the phenomenon.

While fish are equipped with fast reflexes to respond quickly to approaching danger, several species of snake have been observed to be even more on the ball by moving into place at the correctly predicted location of the fish’s intended escape destination before the arrival of the fish to that location. In less than the blink of an eye, the fish who thought it might find safe harbor instead finds itself unable to cancel a surprise one way trip to Digestion Town. 

Through the use and analysis of high speed video techniques, footage of the event, when slowed down to an observable rate, shows the escaping fish heading straight into a waiting mouth.

By waiting for fish to approach completely motionless and in an unusual J-shaped pose, the snake is able to strike a fresh new pose with alarming speed and accuracy, repositioning its head and mouth to where it thinks the fish will want to go to get out of danger.