Robosquirrel vs rattlesnake in head-to-head battle

Jesse Emspak, contributor

Rattlesnakes in California are facing a curious new foe: robotic squirrels.

The unlikely encounter is part of a project to see what happens when the two animals confront one another in the wild. When snakes and squirrels meet, the squirrel often confronts the snake head-first, and moves close to the ground, waving its tail ("flagging") and heating it up at the same time. Snakes almost never strike at flagging squirrels, and when they do they usually miss.

The question was just how the snake was reacting to the squirrel - was it the heat in the tail or the flagging motion? Snakes can perceive infrared radiation, but they can also see the movement. Also, what is the flagging motion telling the snake?

That's where the robot squirrels come in. To find out, Sanjay Joshi, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at the University of California, Davis, built a squirrel with a heatable tail and a flagging mechanism, each controlled separately. That means biologists will be able to tell which signal the snake is reacting to.

Thus far, it seems that the snakes think the robosquirrels are real. Video seems to show the snake reacting (or rather, not striking) in response to the flagging motion.

jamie moyer kansas vs ohio state unemployment winning mega million numbers bruce weber boston globe yahoo.com/mail