National Geographic and other documentary footages show how a pack of coyotes or wolves hunt down their victims. They are in cooperation on how to corner and bring down their preys. This is the first incident on record of a snake group hunting exercise that has coordination.
Cuban Boas cooperate collectively on a snake group hunting of fruit bats in the caves of Desembarco del Granma National Park in Cuba. The slimy reptiles are famous for positioning themselves in the ceiling of the fruit bats' cavern and pinch at the flying creatures.
According to a study by a psychologist from the University of Knoxville, Tennessee, Vladimir Dinets, the snakes huddle themselves and block the egresses of the Jamaican fruit bats. This way, the rate of success of catching their meals is much higher than a lone wolf hunting on its own.
Dinets' paper is published in the Journal Animal Behavior and Cognition, the first scientific recorded documentation of snake group hunting. He says that snakes are social animals and the price is the big catch that the group feast upon, reports National Geographic.
Snake group hunting is a sophisticated social activity previously unnoticed among reptiles. It takes patient coordination and concerted intelligence to achieve the trophy of bringing down the meal for the moment. Dinets adds that snake group hunting may not be for the food in sight but could be a social function activity among the creeping reptiles, reports CNN
What is sad about the snake group hunters is that they are the ones being hunted down by a more sophisticated faction of intelligent poachers, humans. Sooner or later, the snakes could no longer catch their prizes due to the dwindling numbers that remain among Cuban Boas. The reptiles may not perform hunting in packs when there are less of them left and could eventually die into extinction.
