1/10/2024 0 Comments Snake force closureI have tremendous admiration for his insights." "But given the time he conducted the study, I marvel at how he was able to do it. "But he hypothesized that the muscle that shortens the skin was the mechanism that propels a snake forward. Jayne said Lissmann's 1950 description largely was correct. The study was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. You can fit in much narrower holes or tunnels by moving this way than if you had to bend your body and push against something," Newman said. "Snakes evolved from burrowing ancestors. The advantage of this kind of motion is obvious for a predator that eats rodents and other animals that spend time underground. And opposite antagonistic muscles pull on the vertebral column." "One set of muscles pulls the skin forward and then it gets anchored in place. "The vertebral column moves forward at a constant rate," Newman said. Two of the key muscles responsible for this extend from the ribs (costo) to the skin (cutaneous) giving them their name costocutaneous. The snake's muscles are sequentially activated from the head toward the tail in a remarkably fluid and seamless way. The belly scales act like treads on a tire, providing traction with the ground as the muscles pull the snake's internal skeleture forward in an undulating pattern that becomes fluid and seamless when they move quickly. When the snake inches forward, the skin on its belly flexes far more than the skin over its ribcage and back. The researchers also added reference dots on the sides of the snakes to track the subtle movement of their scaly skin. They recorded high-definition video of the snakes moving across a horizontal surface hashed with reference marks. This produced an electromyogram (similar to an EKG) that showed the coordination between the muscles, the snake's skin and its body.įor the study, Newman and Jayne used boa constrictors, big-bodied snakes known for traveling in a straight line over the forest floor. Jayne used high-definition digital cameras to film boa constrictors while recording the electrical impulses generated by particular muscles. Jayne and his graduate student and co-author, Steven Newman, tested Lissmann's hypothesis using equipment unavailable to researchers in the 1950s. "It's been almost 70 years without that type of locomotion being well understood," Jayne said. He hypothesized that the snake's muscles combined with its loose, flexible and squishy belly skin enabled it to scoot forward without bending its spine. This coordination of muscle activity and skin movement was first examined in 1950 by biologist H.W. But the straightforward movement of snakes, called "rectilinear locomotion," has gotten less attention, he said. Jayne, a professor of biological sciences in UC's McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, already has unlocked the mechanics of three kinds of snake locomotion called concertina, serpentine and sidewinding.
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