Meeting Abstract

147.3  Monday, Jan. 7  Sidewinding snakes on sand MARVI, H.*; CHRYSTAL, R.; SHIEH, J.; MENDELSON, J.; HATTON, R.; CHOSET, H.; GOLDMAN, D.; HU, D.; Georgia Institute of Technology; Georgia Institute of Technology; Georgia Institute of Technology; Georgia Institute of Technology and Zoo Atlanta; Oregon State University; Carnegie Mellon University; Georgia Institute of Technology; Georgia Institute of Technology hamid.marvi@gatech.edu

Desert snakes such as the sidewinder rattlesnake Crotalus cerastes propel themselves over sand using sidewinding, a mode of locomotion relying upon traveling waves. While the kinematics of sidewinding on hard ground have previously been studied, movement on more natural substrates such as granular media remain poorly understood. In this experimental study, we collected animals near Yuma, Arizona, and in the laboratory we use 3-D high speed video to characterize the motion of sidewinders (N=4, mass=110 ± 53 grams) as they move on a granular bed composed of natural desert sand. We used a tiltable air-fluidized bed trackway to challenge the animals on different compactions and inclination angles of the granular media. We find that speed decreases with increasing inclination angle while wave frequency remains constant at 0.57 ± 0.01 Hz. Moreover, body speed also increases with increasing body length. We evaluate the ability of an elliptical helix model [Hatton & Choset, 2010] to describe the sidewinders’ body configurations.