Grass snakes (Natrix natrix, N. astreptophora) mimicking cobras display a 'fossil behavior'

Abstract

Mimicking venomous species is widespread among animals, especially snakes. This concerns both visual and behavioral mimicry. Raising the forepart of the body and flattening the neck are characteristic defense behaviors of cobras and mimicked by several non-venomous snake species that co-occur with them. Here we describe the cobra stance for grass snakes (Natrix natrix complex), whose distribution range is largely allopatric to any living cobra species. Among the various defensive behaviors of grass snakes, the cobra stance is uncommon and rarely reported, which raises the questions how effective it is and why it evolved. The fossil record indicates that cobras and grass snakes were abundant and widespread across Europe during the Miocene, where they inhabited the same habitats. They continued to be sympatric in the Mediterranean region until the Pliocene, and in the eastern Mediterranean perhaps until the Middle Pleistocene. Thus, we hypothesize that the cobra stance represents a ’fossil behavior’, which developed when the distribution ranges of grass snakes and cobras broadly overlapped. The absence of cobras in most of the extant distribution range of grass snakes, and hence unfamiliarity of typical predators with these dangerously venomous snakes since the Plio-/Pleistocene, explains its rarity nowadays because displaying the cobra stance is no longer advantageous. Migrating birds from Africa, however, may still serve to some extent as target species for the cobra stance in grass snakes, supporting its survival.