Geek News and Musings

In 1993, The Journal of Chemical Ecology published a study concerning chemosensory investigation in snakes, which the crew from NCBI ROFL believes you will find interesting. If you have a delicate disposition, please pretend the post ends here.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Response of brown tree snakes (Boiga irregularis) to human blood

David Chiszar, Thomas M. Dunn, and Hobart M. Smith

Abstract Ten specimens of Boiga irregularis were presented with clean or bloody tampons. The latter were used by women during menses. Trial duration was 60 sec, intertrial interval was 24 hr, and the dependent variable was rate of tongue flicking (a measure of chemosensory investigation). Bloody tampons elicited significantly more tongue flicking than did control tampons. An additional snake is shown attacking and ingesting a soiled tampon, confirming that chemosensory interest was associated with predatory behavior.

All the authors, as you can see, are men. But NCBI ROFL commenter Josh points out that the acknowledgments of this paper enigmatically thank “J. Chiszar and E. Goldberg for help with various aspects of our work with brown tree snakes…”

Image courtesy Flickr user teejaybee, via CC

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