The tentacled snake: a fisherman of note

The fat shiner swam the 6' length of the 125 gallon aquarium in less than a second. It disappeared from this earth about 5 seconds later.

First I was watching it and thinking how gracefully it sped through and around the waterlogged snags. And even knowing the fish's purpose in the tank, I was unprepared for the speed and dexterity of that strike by the nearest tentacled snake, Erpeton tentaculatum.

The strike wasn't unexpected. I had been keeping and breeding tentacled snakes for several years. In fact, the only difference was that I had more than doubled the size of the shiners proffered. What had been unexpected was the speed - mere seconds were involved - with which the snake caught and swallowed the prey.

For those of you not familiar with the tentacled snake, it is a fully aquatic homolopsine species that occurs widely over Southeast Asia. It attains a length of two to two and a half feet and inhabits quiet, often silted waters. The genus contains only a single species with two distinctly different patterns, a blotched and a striped.

It is a live-bearing species. The "tentacles" (actually two short rostral projections), are sensory and seemingly assist the snake in locating their piscine prey in waters having limited visibility.

More photos below...

Removed from the water for its photo, this is a striped phase tentacled snake. Goodbye shiner! A blotched phase tentacled snake eats.

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.