Archives of The Cold Blooded News

The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society

Volume 31, Number 11;   November, 2004

Snake Blankets

Just to confuse the issue, some of the emerging snakes are imposters -- reptilian cross-dressers that smell like females, but are actually males. For the first day or two after emergence, these "she-males" produce female-like pheromones and it was long thought that they gained a mating advantage by confusing the other males. But Rick Shine (University of Sydney) and colleagues have come up with an alternative hypothesis. When the snakes first emerge, they are extremely cold, and a cold snake is a slow-moving snake. These sluggish serpents face death at the beaks of hungry crows, and Shine suggests that by cloaking themselves in a writhing mass of sex-crazed suitors, the she-males may gain vital protection from predators.

But this is only half the story.

In contrast to the newly emergent males, those that've been out for some time have had a chance to warm up in the sun. The researchers hypothesised that perhaps the she-males were using their suitors as an electric blanket. They therefore compared the temperatures of courted to uncourted males and found that, sure enough, the courted snakes warmed up significantly faster.