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General Description
Moving efficiently across sand: sidewinder
Source and Additional Information
The sidewinder moves across a sandy substratum by fixing part of its body to the ground, pushing against the sand, and then lifting an adjacent part.
"Some desert vipers, such as a rattlesnake, Crotalus cerastes, of the southwestern United States, move across sand by what's called 'sidewinding.' The name refers to perhaps the oddest aspect of the motion, shown in figure 24.7c, the way the overall course of motion takes the snake at nearly a right angle to the heading of its head. As in normal serpentine movement, the snake propagates waves of bending rearward. But it doesn't slide along a serpentine path that traces the line of contact of those curves with the ground. Instead, it alternately fixes part of the body to the ground, pushing sideways against the sand, and lifts the adjacent part. So a given location of the snake never slides but repeatedly lifts and sets down. The process leaves a set of indentations in the sand at right angles to the snake's progress. In this way the snake never has to push against anything but a broad expanse of substratum--a good tactic since a sandy substratum doesn't resist being pushed upon at all well." (Vogel 2003:489)
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References
- Steven Vogel. 2003. Comparative Biomechanics: Life's Physical World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 580 p.
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Last curated:
26 Dec 2009
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Aaron Corbit.
Editor.
"Crotalus cerastes Hallowell, 1854". Encyclopedia of Life, available from "http://www.eol.org/pages/815843". Accessed
22 Mar 2010.
