What does it mean to be cunning? Synonyms include deceptive, strategic or clever.
While most reptiles, and certainly most snakes on the below list, act on instinct and their tactics are mostly focused on self-preservation, some of their behaviours could be seen as cunning – if you look at them from a human perspective, that is.
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Most cunning snakes
King cobra – Ophiophagus hannah
The king cobra is the longest venomous snake in the world, and is widely considered to be the smartest snake in the world, largely due to its nesting patterns and hunting skills.
Most other snakes repeat the same strategy when hunting – but that's not the case with the king cobra. They approach different prey in specific and calculated ways.
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Female king cobras are the only snake to build nests to incubate eggs. While the king cobra is not considered to be aggressive and usually avoids humans (often even when disturbed), it is known to aggressively defend the nest to protect its offspring.
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The king cobra is also culturally significant. In India, the reptile is believed to possess exceptional memory and, according to a myth, the killer of a king cobra stays in the eyes of the snake as an image – to be later picked up by the snake's partner and used to hunt down the killer for revenge.
Tentacled snake – Erpeton tentaculatum
The tentacled snake is quite skinny and less than 75cm long, but its superpower is that of camouflage and the ability to sit motionless waiting for small fish to get close enough to be caught.
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And the tentacles aren't the enormous limbs you're probably imagining, but rather a pair of short, scaled projections on either side of the nose, just 13mm long on an adult. Why does the snake need them? Well, they're there to confuse its prey. Naturally.
When a fish senses a potentially dangerous movement, it uses muscles on the opposite side of the body to the suspected threat to bend into a C shape – ready to accelerate away from danger.
The problem (for the fish) is that the tentacled snake knows this. It adopts its position (where its body is stretched out and its head and neck partially bent towards its tail) and waits motionless for the fish to fall into the trap.
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It detects the fish with its tentacles and rather than striking its head directly towards it, fakes an attack by slightly moving the area of stretched-out body behind the head. The alarmed fish initiates its accelerated manoeuvre and swims directly into the snake's waiting mouth.
The whole process is faster than the human eye can perceive, so it can be only be revealed using high-speed film. From bluff to capture, the fish is done for in less than 30 milliseconds.
Eastern hognose snake – Heterodon platirhinos
The eastern hognose snake is mildly venomous, but its venom is specifically adapted to amphibian prey, so it's harmless to humans (although some people may have an allergic reaction).
What makes this snake interesting is its defensive behaviour. When the eastern hognose is threatened, it hisses and strikes – but with its mouth closed, not attempting to bite, but rather performing a high speed head-butt. This is known as "bluffing" and if that doesn't work, the snake simply... drops dead.
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Well, not quite, but close enough. To deter a predator, the snake will roll onto its back and play dead, even going as far as emitting a foul scent and letting its tongue hang out of its mouth. One individual was observed playing dead for a whole of 45 minutes before "coming back to life" and simply slithering away.
Spider-tailed horned viper – Pseudocerastes urarachnoides
One could go as far as to call this snake an 'anatomical forgery' – it's surely one of the world's weirdest snakes with its spider tail, which it uses to lure and trick its prey.
Millennia of evolution have shaped the end of this snake's tail into a near-perfect replica of a spider. Baby spider-tailed horned vipers are born with regular-looking snake tails, but as they grow, a knob resembling a spider's abdomen develops at the tail's end, and the nearby scales splay outward until they resemble legs. Together, they form a bait-and-switch.
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When hunting, the viper will coil up and twitch its tail slightly, sending the 'spider' marching around on its well-camouflaged body – until a bird or lizard falls for the show.
The capture rate is not 100 per cent, but when it works, it's quite impressive.
Mamba – Dendroaspis
Mambas are already some of the world's deadliest snakes – their venom attacks the nervous system by stopping nerve signals, which causes paralysis. If untreated, it's often fatal.
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Luckily for us, antivenom treats paralysis. But for some patients, the symptoms continue – after being treated with antivenom, they develop painful and violent spasms. This is because the mamba's venom hides a deadly secret that only comes to light once the antivenom is administered.
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The venom of three species of mamba – the black mamba, western green mamba, and Jameson's mamba – targets not one, but two parts of the nervous system. One causes flaccid paralysis by stopping nerve signals reaching muscles, but the other causes nerve signals to overload muscles, leading to spasms.
Without antivenom, the second attack is masked by the first. But when antivenom enters the picture, the way is cleared for the second prong of the attack.
Top image: a king cobra. Credit: DikkyOesin/Getty Images
