A hundred-pace snake was filmed in Taiwan caring for its young, marking a first for the global snake research community, the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The agency and the Formosan Wild Sound Conservation Science Center monitored a nest of the venomous pit viper species after an environment educator in July last year spotted the female snake on Basianshan (八仙山) in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), the agency said.
Deinagkistrodon are an endangered species that live in mountainous areas in Taiwan, in addition to parts of China and Vietnam. The species’ existence is threatened by habitat loss.
Photo: CNA
The research provided valuable insight into parts of the hundred-pacer’s life cycle that had only been speculated on until now, said Lin Hua-ching (林華慶), director of the agency’s Taichung branch.
Using motion-activated infrared cameras and thermal imagers, researchers saw that the mother viper left the nest for brief periods, presumably to facilitate incubation by warming itself, Lin said.
Scientists also attached tiny passive radar transponders to the snakelets to track their movements, he said, adding that the devices are commonly used by hikers to signal their location to emergency rescue teams.
Photo courtesy of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency
The research showed that the snakelets stayed in the nest for two weeks after hatching, he said.
Lin was the first person to successfully breed hundred-pacers in captivity in Taiwan.
Being able to witness a female viper guarding its young was “a pure stroke of luck,” he said.
Coupled with previous research, the study suggested that female hundred-pacers stay with their nest for eight months without feeding, which might result in their death, Lin said.
The survival rate of snakelets remains a mystery, he added.
Agency official Lin Jhan-wei (林展蔚), a researcher at the National Museum of Natural Science, said that the snakelets were tracked until they shed their skin 30 days after hatching.
The young snakes slowly expanded their sphere of activity, initially dwelling in the rocky crevices and foliage near the cave where they nested, she said.
She added that she was “too excited to sleep” throughout the research period, as she “would never see 20 wild hundred-pacers hatch” in her life again.
The team expects to share the study at the 10th World Congress of Herpetology in Malaysia in August and publish a full paper next year, Lin Jhan-wei said.
The agency said that hundred-pacers do not attack humans unless cornered, so the public should leave them alone.
Antivenom is available at every major hospital in Taiwan, it said.
Efforts to regrow the hundred-pacer population have gained momentum since Taiwanese gave up eating snakes, but a full recovery is still a long way off, it added.
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