This is the moment a rat fought off a lunging rattlesnake with the kind of mid-air kick usually reserved for martial arts movies.
The epic footage shows the lightning-fast reactions of a kangaroo rat escaping the snake’s potentially poisonous bite.
To execute the move ‘ninja rat’ has to perform the twisting jump in under 100 milliseconds – faster than the blink of an eye.
Scientists have long been puzzled over how the desert-dwelling rats defended themselves from predators. But until now they haven’t been able to film them slowly enough to see.
Researchers from University of California Riverside (UCR), San Diego State University, and UC Davis teamed up for the project and used the latest high-speed night-vision cameras to capture the rats evading snakes.
PhD candidate Malachi Whitford, of San Diego State University, said that previous cameras were insufficient to pick up rat jumps.
He said: ‘Our previous work used lower-speed cameras, and although it seemed as though snakes had successfully struck their prey, the movements of the animals at the moment of impact was too blurry to see details.’
‘Kangaroo rats’ highly sensitive hearing allows them to hear low-frequency sounds and detect sudden surprise attacks, necessary for avoiding predators.
They also have enlarged hindlimb muscles and thick tendons, allowing for the rapid vertical leaps and high accelerations. The studies were published in Functional Ecology and the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.’
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