Behavior
The short-tailed snake is as poorly understood as it is seldom-seen, rare and geographically limited. It is a burrowing snake that rarely appears above ground and does so even more rarely during the day. Like other snakes of the tribe Lampropeltini, it vibrates its tail when startled by predators or people but can be distinguished from a rattlesnake by its slender build and lack of rattle. An excitable snake, it makes a poor captive and is protected against harassment or captivity by Florida law. Despite this, much of what little we know about the short-tailed snake has been based on observations of captive specimens.
Read more about this topic: Short-tailed Snake
Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“There is a parallel between the twos and the tens. Tens are trying to test their abilities again, sizing up and experimenting to discover how to fit in. They don’t mean everything they do and say. They are just testing. . . . Take a good deal of your daughter’s behavior with a grain of salt. Try to handle the really outrageous as matter-of-factly as you would a mistake in grammar or spelling.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“The ease with which problems are understood and solved on paper, in books and magazine articles, is never matched by the reality of the mother’s experience. . . . Her child’s behavior often does not follow the storybook version. Her own feelings don’t match the way she has been told she ought to feel. . . . There is something wrong with either her child or her, she thinks. Either way, she accepts the blame and guilt.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“No one thinks anything silly is suitable when they are an adolescent. Such an enormous share of their own behavior is silly that they lose all proper perspective on silliness, like a baker who is nauseated by the sight of his own eclairs. This provides another good argument for the emerging theory that the best use of cryogenics is to freeze all human beings when they are between the ages of twelve and nineteen.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)