Keratin is the same stuff that makes up human fingernails. So, how do these serpents make their tails sound like musical instruments? Rattlesnakes aren’t the only snakes that rattle their tail, but they are the most iconic. Snakes Rattle Their Tails To Warn PredatorsĮven if you don’t live in an area with rattlesnakes, you’ve probably heard that when a rattlesnake rattles, it’s time to skedaddle. Bull snakes are non-venomous, so the rattle noise is meant to scare potential predators away, duping them into believing they’re dealing with a venomous rattlesnake. These slithery reptiles can modify their hiss so that it resembles a rattle. One of the only exceptions to the rule is the bull snake. When snakes hiss, they’re simply telling a predator to back off. So, if you’re walking down a path and talking loudly, this will not alert a snake to your presence anywhere near as much as the vibrations from your footsteps.Īn article in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that the sound of snake hisses varies little between species, which means there’s no great mystery behind what a hiss means. They use their middle ear bone’s connection to the jaw bone to ‘hear’ vibrations. The cool thing is, snakes can still sense sound! So, how do they do it?Īccording to an article in the University of Chicago Press Journals, snakes use what is called somatic hearing. What that boils down to is snakes don’t have the necessary parts to hear as humans hear. They lack an outer ear as well as something called a tympanic middle ear. Snakes aren’t like most animals that make noises. But before we talk about hissing, let’s talk a little about snake anatomy. Hissing is one of the most common sounds that a snake makes. Snakes Hiss To Intimidate Potential Predators As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We suspect that wild sloths actually live for much longer than this, but only time will tell.Just to add – when you shop using links from Pest Pointers, we may earn affiliate commissions if you make a purchase. The oldest known sloth in the world just turned 50 years old and she lives at a zoo in Germany. All we have to go on is the lifespan in captivity, but sloths do not do well outside of their natural environment. No one knows how long they live forīecause sloths are so difficult to study in the wild, no one has ever followed an individual from birth until death and it is virtually impossible to accurately determine the age of an adult sloth. A single sloth can host up to 950 moths and beetles within its fur at once.
Some species of fungi living in sloth fur have been found to be active against certain strains of bacteria, cancer and parasites! Sloth hair also provides home to an entire ecosystem of invertebrates - some species of which are found nowhere else on earth (like the ‘sloth moth’). Sloths have an unusual method of camouflage - cracks in their hair allow many different species of algae and fungi to grow which makes them appear green. When two sloths fight it is typically over access to a female for mating, and the aim of a sloth fight is to knock your opponent out of the tree. But don't worry, all sloths are anatomically designed to fall and survive - they can plummet from over 100 feet without injury (that’s the height of twelve double-decker buses). On average, a sloth will fall out of a tree once a week for its entire life. Sloths are anatomically designed to fall out of trees. Thankfully, sloths compensate for such poor vision by having a phenomenal sense of smell and a great spatial memory! Their bad eyesight also plays a key role in the sloths slowness - you can’t run around in the trees if you can’t see where you are going! As a result all sloths are colour-blind, can only see poorly in dim light and are completely blind in bright daylight. They have a very rare condition called rod monochromacy which means that they completely lack cone cells in their eyes. While there are many different theories, the likely explanation is that it’s all about communication and reproduction. This weird weekly routine remains one of the biggest mysteries surrounding sloth behaviour. Sloths are famous for their bizarre bathroom habits - they will only relieve themselves once a week and can lose up to a third of their body weight in one sitting! Furthermore, they will only do it on the ground after wiggling around the base of a tree to dig a little hole.
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