How do spitting cobras move

Occasionally, red spitting cobras will detect pheromones from other species or from the same sex. Once red spitting cobras find a viable mate, males will perform dances.

Males raise and lower their heads, sway their heads side-to-side, flick their tongues, and give chase to females. Red spitting cobras reach sexual maturity after 2 to 3 years. Reproductive behavior in temperate-zone male snakes is called "dissociated" Crews, This means there is a difference in seasons between the peak of spermatogenic activity and reproductive behavior.

Male snakes have two cycles for reproductive behavior: postnuptial and prenuptial. Red spitting cobras mainly experience postnuptial reproductive cycles. In postnuptial behavior, spermatogenesis rises in male snakes in the late months of spring, directly after mating. It declines in the fall. This may suggest two breeding seasons, though no such information has been found.

Females have reproductive behavior that is more uniform than males. Female produce oocytes at the same time as vitellogenesis takes place. The production of oocytes and vitellogenesis occurs in spring.

This process is triggered by the act of mating. Development time from oocyte to ova is about 3 years in cobras. During ovulation, females seek warmer areas and bask in the sun. Female cobras experience seasonal reproduction, commonly associated with a period of about 3 to 6 months during the rainy season. Female red spitting cobras have clutch sizes of 2 to 16 eggs, while the average clutch size is about 7 eggs.

It is uncommon for females to protect their eggs after laying them, or after they hatch. Red spitting cobras are solitary. It has been rare to find a female protecting its eggs, and when the female is guarding its eggs they are usually freshly laid. There is no parental investment by males or females during incubation.

Maximum longevity for captive red spitting cobras is reported at No reports of longevity in the wild have been published. Snider and Bowler, Red spitting cobras are solitary; adults are nocturnal while juveniles are diurnal. The only social behaviors they exhibit are territorial disputes, courtship, and mating.

During territorial disputes and while hunting red spitting cobras display elevated rates of tongue flicking. When these snakes are aggravated they will engage each other, or their prey, and will sway their heads back and forth.

In territorial disputes this head swaying tactic is used to intimidate enemies. If neither of the males involved are intimidated, they lock necks in an attempt to pin each other to the ground. Biting during territorial disputes is rarely observed and has no apparent effect on bitten males. Red spitting cobras do not have any fixed territory.

Instead they will defend whatever area they are in at the time. Males have disputes over mates as well as territory. These two kids of disputes look much the same. A behavior uniques to the genus Naja is the ability to "spit" venom. Naja species eject venom from their hollow fangs to try and blind prey or predators. Red spitting cobras are known for having an accurate, fine spray.

They can spit venom up to 2. They use this adaption when engaging prey and predators. Males do not use this adaptation in disputes with other males.

Boyer, et al. Red spitting cobras do not defend a fixed territory. Home ranges have not been reported for this species. In other cobras, home ranges of 6. It's likely that home ranges for red spitting cobras are similar. Stuart, et al. Red spitting cobras rely mostly on visual stimuli and, secondarily, chemosensory perception and thermal senses. Snakes cannot hear well, but they do pick up vibrations from the ground through their jaws. These snakes are solitary animals, only interacting for courtship.

It is expected that they communicate and dispute over food or territory, though no such aggression has been reported. For these snakes to engage in courtship behaviors, an individual must be close enough to a potential mate to sense their pheromones. To communicate with females, males perform dances.

This involves raising and lowering their heads, swaying their heads from side to side, and flicking their tongues. If an individual female accepts a male as a mate, it will turn away and the male will give chase. In disputes, red spitting cobras only engage through vomeronasal and chemosensory cues.

If either of these senses are blocked, no contact will occur. To establish dominance, competing snakes raise their bodies, sway their heads, and attempt to hook necks in order to wrestle their opponent to the ground.

When hunting, red spitting cobras use mainly visual and vomeronasal cues to locate prey. They are able to differentiate the scent marks of different animals and recognize specific chemical cues from their prey.

Snakes use the forked tips of their tongues to pick up chemicals from the environment. Once snakes retract their tongues, the forked tips enter two separate internal nasal cavities, called the vomeronasal organ.

The vomeronasal organ then sends information about chemicals to the brain. Red spitting cobras are strictly carnivorous, normally only taking prey that they have killed themselves. Their primary diet consists of rodents, lizards, and frogs or toads. Juvenile red spitting cobras select prey based on their familiarity of prey in the area, prey abundance, and their ability to safely kill the animal.

Red spitting cobras are active foragers, looking for food rather than waiting for prey and ambushing them. They are also considered active hunters because, once they spot prey, they will chase that prey. Red spitting cobras, like most elapid cobras, primarily use visual stimuli to spot prey.

If prey is close by but out of sight, red spitting cobras can sense that prey is close by using thermal and chemical cues. They pick up chemical traces by flicking their tongues. The two species investigated may have different fang morphologies.

African spitters have spiral grooves in the inside of their fangs Bogert ; Greene et al. Most likely, this forces the venom out in a spin, which may increase the accuracy and thus may enable the snakes to hit more precisely Greene et al.

In any case the venom patterns of N. By spraying N. Spitting cobras eject their venom up to a distance of at least 3 m Warrell and Ormerod Whether they adjust the width and height of venom distribution to target size and therefore to target distance remains an open question. By analyzing the shape of spitting patterns one has to take into account that the faces photos moved at the time of venom ejection. Our high-speed video analysis uncovered that venom ejection lasted for only 50—70 ms.

Since the spitting patterns—on average—covered an area of Our study shows that the height and width of the spitting patterns did not depend on the distance between the eyes of the faces presented. Therefore the cobras N. The centre of the spitting patterns usually was located between the eyes and at eye level Fig.

However, according to statistics this is most likely due to the fact that the eyes are in the middle of the face. We therefore suggest that the snakes aimed either at the middle of a face or at the area between the eyes. There may be no need for a cobra to hit both eyes of an aggressor since one painful eye may be sufficient to dissuade a harasser or predator.

In both cobra species, spitting was triggered if faces were presented. In contrast, a moving human hand agitated the snakes but—with one exception—failed to elicit spitting. Therefore, we assumed that the eyes of the presented faces were the main cues that elicited spitting. To our surprise, no difference in spitting activity was observed if a photo that showed a face with only one instead of two eyes was used as a stimulus.

One possible explanation are the eye-like bright patches that remained where the eyes had been digitally removed. Further studies are needed to clarify how spitting cobras recognize define faces.

Bogert CM Dentitional phenomena in cobras and other elapids, with notes on adaptive modification of fangs. Bull Am Museum Nat Hist — Google Scholar. Arnoldia Rhod — Cimbebasia — Science — Article Google Scholar. Academic, New York, pp — Toxicon — Acta Trop — Goring J Can a cobra eject its venom? J Bombay Nat Hist Soc Greene H Antipredator mechanisms in reptiles. Academic, New York, pp 1— University of California Press, Berkeley. The ringhals cobra Hemachatus haemachatus venom-induced corneal opacification syndrome.

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CAS Google Scholar. J Herpetol — Mattison C The encyclopedia of snakes. Blandford, London. Rasmussen S. J Zool — Herpetol — Slowinski JB, Knight A, Rooney A Inferring species trees from gene trees: a phylogenetic analysis of the Elapidae serpentes based on the amino acid sequences venom protein. Mol Phylogenet Evol — Academic, London. Asher and Co, Amsterdam. Warrell D, Ormerod L Snake venom ophthalmia and blindness caused by the spitting cobra Naja nigricollis in Nigeria.

Am J Trop Med Hyg — J Exp Biol — PubMed Article Google Scholar. Academic, San Diego. Download references. We would like to acknowledge Boris Chagnaud for his technical help with the high-speed video filming and Michael Hofmann for his help with the analysis of spitting pattern centres. We thank Wolfgang Alt and Gabriele Uhl for help with statistics.

We also thank Joachim Mogdans and two anonymous referees for critically reading the manuscript and for many helpful suggestions. Westhoff, K. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to G. Reprints and Permissions. Westhoff, G. The spitting behavior of two species of spitting cobras. J Comp Physiol A , — Download citation. Cobra home. These mighty snakes live in Africa and Asia, preferring savannas, open woodlands, plains, and rocky hillsides.

Eating out. At dawn and dusk, hungry cobras begin to move and look for a good spot to hunt for their meal. They can go for days or even months without eating, depending on how large their last meal was. The snake's slow metabolism makes this possible.

A mouse, rat, ground squirrel, or rabbit are its main prey items, but cobras may also eat amphibians, birds, lizards, other snakes, and eggs. Cobras use their forked tongue to smell prey. The tongue moves in and out, picking up odor particles from the ground and passing them over a special smelling organ in the roof of the mouth, called the Jacobson's organ. This helps the snake sniff out its next meal. The cobra, like other venomous snakes, is lightning fast when it strikes.

But it has somewhat smaller fangs, so it may strike and chew rather than strike and release, or it may strike several times until the venom has done its job. Hooded hatchlings. A cobra female produces a clutch of eggs each year and usually stays nearby to guard her eggs until they hatch. A baby cobra, like all snakes, is called a hatchling. It is able to take care of itself from the start and can spread its hood and strike on the same day it hatches.

A large yolk sac remains in the hatchling's stomach to give it nourishment for up to two weeks before it needs to find food on its own. The king cobra may grow to be It is found throughout India, southern China, and Southeast Asia. The king cobra usually eats other snakes, even venomous ones!

If it feels threatened, the king cobra flares its hood, makes a high-pitched hiss, and rears itself up. We use them to help improve our content, personalise it for you and tailor our digital advertising on third-party platforms. During Beta testing articles may only be saved for seven days. Create a list of articles to read later. You will be able to access your list from any article in Discover. A team at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine are experts at collecting snake venom.

But spitting cobras are a double threat. Venom has a complex evolutionary history and the reason some cobras evolved the ability to spit theirs is not entirely clear. Watch the video above to discover the secrets of spitting cobras and their toxic defences. But the herpetologists reptile and amphibian experts and scientists face an extra challenge when it comes to collecting spitting cobra venom.

These snakes are a double threat. Not only can they inject venom through a painful bite, they can also spit their toxins a distance of two or three metres.