Snakes on Planes? Serpents Accelerate Faster Than Fighter Pilots

Snakes can strike faster than the blink of an eye and can reach cheek-jiggling accelerations that would cause a fighter pilot to black out, new high-speed video reveals. Instead, ordinary, nonvenomous constrictors such as rat snakes can often strike as fast as their deadly counterparts. "I was quite shocked to see the short strike durations and high strike accelerations coming from an unassuming, easily found rat snake," said study lead author David Penning, a functional morphology doctoral candidate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Read More http://ift.tt/1Mx5bNX