Why does the sidewinder move sideways

This is because in a frictionless environment, the directional friction function would make movement much harder. Instead of sliding smoothly, the sidewinder basically lifts chunks of their body into the air. By pulling and pushing in this manner, they navigate through the sandy grounds. However, she discovered that these snakes still have vestigial belly spikes as well as pits, a leftover from their life before they evolved to adapt.

The babies are live-born rather than hatching from eggs. After they shed their skin for the first time, they disperse into the world on their own.

Despite being extremely hot in the summer, the southwestern deserts of the U. This species lives mostly in very sandy areas of the deserts of the southwestern U.

Sidewinders occasionally show up in suburban areas of places like Palm Springs, California, or Phoenix, Arizona, where human development has encroached into their native desert habitats. In the wild, sidewinders eat almost exclusively rodents and lizards, with kangaroo rats, whiptail lizards, and fringe-toed lizards being favorite prey.

At the Zoo, they do fine on a steady diet of mice. In collaboration with physicists and engineers from Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon University, Zoo Atlanta staff are studying sidewinding locomotion in order to refine the abilities of snake-shaped robots to traverse loose sand environments without getting stuck.

This research has important potential applications for search-and-rescue, military, lunar-lander types of operations, and even archeological exploration. Baba ola has come to those who face challenges in their lives such as financial problems etc. Our editorial team Terms of use Privacy policy Consent preferences Legal Subscribe to our newsletter.

How the sidewinder rattlesnake moves around To move across the loose and burning sand of the desert, the sidewinder rattlesnake uses an impressive technique. It's even studied for potential use in robotics. And even more. Thiviandhiran V. Sekar P. Researchers in the United States wanted to know what makes sidewinder snakes move the way they do, so they took a microscopic look at the shed skin of.

Researchers in the United States wanted to know what makes sidewinder snakes move the way they do, so they took a microscopic look at the shed skin of three sidewinder snake species to find out, as well as how the bodies of these unique reptiles move about the sand. The three snakes they studied include the sidewinder rattlesnake Crotalus cerastes , a species native to the United States and northern Mexico, the Saharan horned viper Cerastes cerastes and Saharan sand viper Cerastes vipera two species native to North African deserts.

The researchers noted that when non-sidewinding snakes move about, they tend to keep their bellies in constant contact with the ground in which they are traveling.