For anyone interested this paper, the largest dataset of its kind, compared 36 venomous species across three major families (Viperidae, Elapidae, Colubridae) all filmed under identical lab conditions. They captured behavioural events never clearly documented before using 3D motion capture at 1000 fps. As a casual observer, it’s hard not to be amazed (and a little unnerved) by the fact that some snakes strike faster than the blink of an eye, so fast their prey never even gets the chance to move.
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This is really interesting! This should be in Nature Talk instead of General because the topic is not directly related to iNaturalist and is just nature in general.
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It would be interesting to compare the reflex speed of a mongoose!
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I can vouch for the fact that a rattlesnake can strike faster than I can respond by getting out of the way. Thankfully I’ve avoided an actual bite.
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Yeah, that’d be fascinating to see measured properly, though I think the mongoose’s advantage probably isn’t pure reflex speed. In a real encounter, a mongoose seems to win more by anticipation and timing than by out-reflexing the snake. They read the snake’s body cues and start moving right as the strike begins, staying out of range until they wear it down. So it’s probably not that mongooses are “faster” in a mechanical sense, but that they’re better at reading the strike before it happens.
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