Concertina Locomotion
Snakes have always been the masters of so called the “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution” this is because they have been found everywhere on earth. There is not a place where they are not found, be it the deserts, or the oceans and even those mountains and hills that remain frozen almost through the year.
This is the reason, why most of them have adopted different forms of locomotion that would suit to their needs and requirement. All those snakes that are found in the deserts and barren areas of the U.S. have different ways of locomotion, when compared to their relatives that are found the tropical forests and woods.
The snake uses five different kinds of locomotion and they are the Simple Undulation, the Lateral Undulation, the Side winding and the Concertina and even the Slide Pushing. The simple undulation is characterized by waves of lateral objects that are being propagated along the entire body, right from the head of the snake to the tail of the snake.
The Lateral Undulation is the most common snake locomotion and this is simple waves of lateral bending that are propagated along the body from the head to the tail. This kind of locomotion helps the snake to push itself against the rock or any other object.
The Concertina Locomotion is what we are concerned about, the Concertina locomotion involves the alternate pulling and dragging of the snake body with the help of those muscular bends. The snake would usually straighten the body again towards the forward part. So in this way the snake is able to drag and push itself just with the help of the bends that the body creates.
In this way the forward part of the body would be resting on the floor and then again the backward part of the body would drag it forwards.
In the Concertina locomotion the bends that are created on the body might push laterally against the side wards and that too against the ground. This would also help the snake from slipping to another direction. Thus the principle of static friction seems to be critical to Concertina locomotion.
The Concertina locomotion also is used to crawl and move around the caves and tunnels that also seem to be excellent hunting grounds for most of the snakes. This is because there are many bats and other reptiles that come here to hide themselves during the heat of the day.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 6:13 am and is filed under Locomotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.