Study the rattlesnakes through squirrels

Rattlesnakes in California often attack the ground squirrels for food. Snakes bite into small squirrels from behind. But in some cases, they are gentle.

To find out, Professor Sanjay Joshi designed squirrels to study snake behavior. When an adult squirrel confronts a snake, its body lengthens, its tail upright, radiant and pale. Snakes rarely attack squirrels behaving like that.

Robt quirrels are made from a stuffed mechanical squirrel, its tail designed to work like a real thing. The resulting film shows that when the squirrel's tail radiates, the snake swallows to stop holding the distance. If the tail is still warm, it can be bitten in the head.

If you remove the tail of the robot squirrel, it is easy to snake attack. So the squirrels actually can communicate with snakes through the tail heat and this is the first time scientists have documented infrared communication in the animal kingdom.