Defensive tail displays in dice snakes (Natrix tessellata) are influenced by colour morph and sex

What is it about?

Tail waving displays are some of the most common defensive displays in Squamates and are reported for a wide variety of species. Despite this, there are few studies dedicated to underlying mechanisms of the occurrence of such displays. In a population of dice snakes with three distinct color morphs we examined the effects of morph, sex, size and temperature on the occurrence of this behaviour. Dice snakes display tail waving during two distinct phases of a simulated predator encounter: immediately on capture and during post-capture immobility. Morph and sex were in fact important predictors of the occurrence of tail waving in dice snakes. Even though the occurrence of tail waving was low , our study provides a baseline for further examining this behaviour. As we observed that tail waving occurs on capture and post-capture situations, it is not excluded that it doesn’t happen in other instances or in conjunction with other behaviours. Finally, the low occurrence of these displays might lead to a wrong conclusion that such behaviours are underutilized in the defensive arsenal of dice snakes, but we have to keep in mind that we lack context of these snakes facing a real life predator (and not a human researcher as a proxy).

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