University of Cincinnati biologist Bruce Jayne studied the
"It's a very good way to move in confined spaces," Jayne said. "A lot of heavy-bodied snakes use this locomotion: vipers, boa constrictors, anacondas and pythons."
His study titled "Crawling without Wiggling" was published in December in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Snakes typically swim, climb or crawl by bending their spine into serpentine coils or using the leading edges to push off objects. An extreme example of their diversity of movement gives the sidewinder rattlesnake its name.
Jayne, a professor of biological sciences in UC's McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, already has unlocked the mechanics of three kinds of snake locomotion called concertina, serpentine and sidewinding. But the straightforward movement of snakes, called "rectilinear locomotion," has gotten less attention, he said.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-snakes-straight-line.html#jCp
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