Snakes 'drop bombs' for defense instead of using venom

The Western hook-nosed snake, a small snake endemic to the deserts of the United States and Mexico, is famous for its defense mechanism by farting rather than using venom.

Cobras and rattlesnakes are deadly venomous, constrictors like pythons have strong muscles, but western hook-nosed snakes rely on a more unusual defense mechanism: farting.

The farting sound made by these small snakes can travel up to 2m.

When threatened, it emits rumbling bubbles of air from its cushion - the usual opening for excretion in a snake's tail. Known as bloating in the body (cloacal popping) or defenses.

This uncanny means of defense is designed to embarrass predators long enough for the snakes to escape.

Bruce Young, an experimental morphologist at Lafayette University in Easton, Pennsylvania told Discover Magazine that Western hook-nosed snakes create their signature farts by using two sets of muscles to isolate a sac compressed air and then contract the cloacal sphincter to forcefully expel it.

The farting sound made by these small snakes can travel as far as 6'6 ft, lasts only about 2/10ths of a second, and is often repetitive.

While not the loudest farts by human standards, they tend to produce a higher pitch than other animals, so this can be quite confusing.

Bruce Young conducted a number of laboratory experiments and found that some western hook-nosed snakes are so powerful that they lift themselves off the ground.

"It's basically snake flatulence, but hook-nosed snakes put a lot of energy into this area, to the point where in some cases, they'll lift themselves off the ground," Young said.

Over the years we've introduced a number of defense mechanisms that are unique to animals, but this one in the snub-nosed snake is considered very strange.

The western hook-nosed snake and the Arizona coral snake are the only snakes known to use natural defense mechanisms.