Meeting Abstract
A key feature of the ecology of many species of snakes is that when they are not active, they often hide beneath objects and within a wide variety of crevices and holes. Despite this well-known habit of snakes, experimental data are lacking regarding how the visual attributes of openings may affect their attractiveness for snakes seeking a refuge. Hence, we performed laboratory experiments with twelve boa constrictors to test whether variation in the dimensions of two dark holes affected where the snakes chose to take refuge. We initially placed the snakes so that their head was in the center of a large octagonal chamber, 2 m in diameter, with holes in the middle and bottom edge of each of two walls that were located at 45 degrees to the left and right of the initial position of the head of the snake. A total of six treatments included the following pairs of holes with variable width by height (WxH): 1) 1×1 vs. 1×2, 2) 1×1 vs. 2×1, 3) 1×2 vs. 2×1, 4) 1×1 vs. 2×2, 5) 1×2 vs. 2×2, and 6) 2×1 vs. 2×2. No significant preferences occurred in treatments 1-3. Hence, we did not detect a significant effect of the orientation of the long axes of the rectangular openings. For treatments 4-6 the snakes significantly preferred the large square opening compared to all of the other alternatives. The most significant preference (P<0.001) occurred for the large versus the small square, which was also the treatment with the greatest difference between the areas of the two openings. Thus, rather than preferring a tight-fitting openings, the preferences that we observed may have resulted mainly from an increased conspicuousness associated with a very large difference in the area of the openings.
