Side to Side Swaying as a Defensive Behaviour in the Dekay’s Brownsnake (Storeria dekayi)

Auteurs-es

  • David L. LeGros Ontario Parks

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.22621/cfn.v131i3.1897

Mots-clés :

Dekay’s Brownsnake, Northern Brownsnake, Storeria dekayi, defensive behaviour, swaying, Rondeau Provincial Park, Ontario

Résumé

When discovered by humans, Dekay’s Brownsnake (Storeria dekayi) exhibits a range of defensive behaviours that are likely used to cope with a variety of potential predators. After being handled, a brownsnake at Rondeau Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada, was observed to coil the anterior portion of its body and to sway the coil from side to side as it attempted to flee. Swaying has rarely been documented in Dekay’s Brownsnake and may be a tactic to distract or confuse a visually oriented predator.

Biographie de l'auteur-e

David L. LeGros, Ontario Parks

Algonquin Provincial Park

Téléchargements

Publié-e

2018-02-28

Numéro

Vol. 131 No. 3 (2017)

Rubrique

Notes

Licence

Copyright for Canadian Field-Naturalist content is held by the Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club, except for content published by employees of federal government departments, in which case the copyright is held by the Crown. In-copyright content available at the Biodiversity Heritage Library is available for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. For usage of content at the BHL for purposes other than those allowed under this licence, contact us.

 

To request use of copyright material,  please contact our editor, Dr. Dwayne Lepitzki: editor -at- canadianfieldnaturalist -dot- ca