Bitis peringueyi – This adder can get up to 300mm long. Its eyes is located on top of its head, and is the only thing showing when it buries itself in the sand. When a prey, ie the Shovel-snouted Lizard comes close it can wriggle its black tail tip to attract it. The bites are venomous but not deadly.
I have observed the peringuey’s adders for year in the Namib Sand Sea as a guide. I am not a specialist and have not had the luxury of time to do a full study on their behavior. However, in my experience the snakes tend to hunt at night, actively. I know that that goes against the normal consensus that they ability to hide in the sand like that makes the ideal ‘sit and wait’ predator, but it simply doesn’t seem to be what actually happens. It appears to me that they go out at night and move around (if you have spent a couple mornings following tracks of a few individuals and know a little about reading tracks (instead of just following to find the snake) then you would probably have seen what I have seen. They move far, very far, at night. And it is in this moving time that they hunt. They will, I guess, catch something in the day time if it happens to run over them, but that can be a long wait in the deep parts of the desert where both the snakes and their prey are at low densities. The main function of the ‘hiding’ is to be able to lie out in the day time to warm in the morning without exposing their bodies to predators and to hide in the shade in the rest of the day, again, avoiding predation by being under ground. One of the reasons why I questioned the norm is that they simply don’t lie in the best places to catch any of the lizards in the dunes (certainly not the shovel snouted lizards.) In my experience, I also feel that they eat more geckos than diurnal lizards.
Anyway, like I said, these are simply observations, and I may be completely wrong. They are cool snakes.
Was ist das?
this snakes can’t see just feel what is round it