Locomotion
There are many experts that believe that snakes use different kinds of locomotion and these depend upon different circumstances and conditions. There are five kinds of locomotion that are used by the snake according to different modes to land and territorial habitat. The kind of locomotion that the snake uses depends upon several factors and reasons such as the surface on which it has to crawl and the speed at which it crawls and as already said before, the snake use different types of locomotion for different kinds of purposes.
Well the first kind of locomotion is the Simple Undulation. This is characterized by the waves that are produced and propagated by literal bending right from their head to their tail. These bends literally push their body muscles against the surface objects but don’t deform around them. And believe me it’s not only the snakes that use these kinds of locomotion but also some other kinds of reptiles such as lizards that use these kinds of locomotion style.
Then there is another such locomotion style such as the lateral undulation and this seems to be the most usual style of these serpents. In lateral locomotion these snakes produce and propagate waves that are almost similar to the simple Undulation but are slightly different from it. In this locomotion style whenever a bend or a wave contacts any object such as a rock or a stick then it exerts force against it and deforms locally around it. This is especially when the snake pushes itself against multiple objects simultaneously and at the same time leaving the resultant vector that pushes its body forward. The force exertion against each other object is inversely proportional to the number of objects that are being used to push against its body, but the total force that is used by the snake is practically constant and this gives it some substrate and speed.
The side winding is another kind of locomotion that is used by the snakes that live and reside in the desert areas of the U.S.as well as all over the world. This, I am sure, you would be knowing as they crawl sideward’s and the snake have started to move around this way because they help the snake to move and crawl with great speed and that too without getting burnt on the lower part of its body since the desert becomes very hot during the day time.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 7:28 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.