berus thanatosis

[Paul Lambourne]

Hello all,

My friend was out herping yesterday and happened upon a fox attemting to predate on a male berus. The berus appeared dead, mouth open, upside down. He chased the fox away and found that the snake was in fact completely unharmed an appeared to have been playing dead.

I have obviously witnessed this behaviour in a number of snakes, Natrix natrix,tesselata,heterodon nasicus, however, despite many hours in the field, I have never seen this behaviour in berus or any other venomous snake..

I know many of you have many more hours in the field than me, with venomous snakes, has anybody seen this before?

A picture would be fabulous.

Cheers

Paul

[Bastien Comment]

Hi Paul,

Interesting story. I've never experienced that myself but I remember that I had been very surprised to read in the book "Snakes of Southern Africa" that the Rinkhals (Hemachatus haemachatus) can fake death despite the fact that it's a very dangerous and venomous snake (and even a spitter...)

[Ilian Velikov]

That's really interesting! I've never seen this but I don't have that much experience with venomous snakes. Anyway, I think that shows again how valuable venom is to snakes and to what extend they'll go to save it...

Could the adder have learned this from those guys > http://fieldherping.eu/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1619 They seem to hang together quite often

[Francesco Tri]

It seems to me a very strange story, we are sure that it was not really a grass snake?

I do not believe that an adder will face attack by a fox without bite.

what would be the advantage?

Foxes eat dead snakes

The stories of friends must always be taken with benefit of the doubt

[Paul Lambourne]

Francesco

Ordinarily I would share your sceptism.. However my friend is a well respected herpetologist, and has been involved in Berus reasearch for many many years.

Paul

[Daniel Bohle]

no picture?

[Francesco Tri]

Ordinarily I would share your sceptism.. However my friend is a well respected herpetologist, and has been involved in Berus reasearch for many many years.

In this case I not object more!
it would be really interesting if you were able to document what happened, really very interesting