Both venomous and non-venomous snakes can strike faster than mammalian prey and predators can react.
David Penning and his colleagues at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette analysed the defensive strikes of non-venomous Texas ratsnakes (Pantherophis obsoletus) and two species of venomous snake: western cottonmouth vipers (Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma; pictured) and western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox). They found that all snakes could accelerate at more than 160 metres per second squared (ms−2) and reach speeds approaching 3 metres per second. This enables the animals to cover average distances of 13.6–16.7 centimetres in 66–74 milliseconds.
The highest recorded accelerations of nearly 300 ms−2 from a ratsnake and a rattlesnake were roughly 10 times those of jackrabbits attempting to escape.
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Snakes strike with super speed. Nature 531, 416 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/531416a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/531416a