Six Clever Snakes to Celebrate as We Slither Into the Lunar New Year

According to folklore, the sequence of the animals in the Chinese zodiac was determined in a “Great Race” hosted by the Jade Emperor over 2,000 years ago. All the world’s animals were invited, but only 12 showed up, and the order in which they crossed the finish line became the order they would appear on the ever-repeating lunar zodiac cycle. Sociable Rat came first, kind and gentle Pig came last, and slithering in at number six was Snake.

Thousands of years later, each lunar year is still said to possess certain characteristics of its animal namesake, and those born in each year are believed to personify those traits. True to the serpents of its name, people born in the year of the snake are held to be cunning, intelligent and charming.

This January 29, people all over the world are ushering in the Year of the Snake, celebrating with their own iterations of Lunar New Year traditions. To toast this wisdom-suffused slice of the Chinese zodiac cycle, we summoned six of nature’s cleverest serpents and paired them with “chengyu,” usually four-character Chinese idioms that are used to convey wisdom. Most chengyu are derived from traditional Chinese folklore, like the story of the Great Race itself. From creative hunting tactics to cheeky defense mechanisms, these snake species substantiate the famed qualities chronicled in the Jade Emperor’s long-ago competition.

死里逃生 (Si li tao sheng): “To find a way out of certain death”

Tibetan hot-spring snake

Tibetan snake in Hot Springs Is Hunting Fish

In that story of the Great Race, Snake came sixth not through brute strength but through cunning use of the resources at hand. The slinky reptile hitched a ride on Horse’s hoof for most of the race, only jumping off at the last minute to cross the finish line ahead of him.

At an extreme 14,800 feet high on the Tibetan Plateau, higher than snakes are typically expected to be found, lives the rare Tibetan hot-spring snake (Thermophis baileyi). It survives in its inhospitable climate by clinging to the heat from the area’s geothermal pools.

“Up there, it’s freezing cold, and the air is very thin,” says Alex Pyron, a herpetologist at the George Washington University. “You could die of hypothermia and still get a sunburn. And yet these snakes have carved out a space for themselves.”

Pyron says that the Tibetan hot-spring snakes have probably inhabited their area for millions of years, since before the plateau was uplifted by geological change. Rather than forfeit their habitat, the snakes have resourcefully adapted with it, riding the rising plateau into the cold, thin air from their poolside hangouts.

笑里藏刀 (Xiao li cang dao): “A dagger hidden behind a smile”

Spider-tailed horned viper

When spider-tailed horned vipers were first stumbled upon by researchers in Iran’s Zagros Mountains in the mid-20th century, they were incorrectly thought to be deformed members of other snake species. But the bulbous embellishment at the end of this viper’s tail is not a tumor or other growth imperfection, but rather one of nature’s trickiest anatomical lures.

The spider-tailed horned viper (Pseudocerastes urarachnoides) was properly identified as a unique species in 2006 and gets its name from its tail ornamentation, which resembles a fleshy spider. The baby viper’s tail grows bulbous as it matures, with the scales eventually splaying out to resemble arachnid legs.

Camouflaged among desert rocks, the deadly illusionist extends its spider-like tail into the open and twitches it to summon hungry insect-eating birds. When a predator descends to snack on the spider, it is met instead with the jaws of the devious snake.

迫不及待 (Po bu ji dai): “Impatiently waiting”

Tentacled snake

This Nightmarish Tentacled Snake is a Lightning-Fast Underwater Hunter

Speaking of brilliant hunting schemes, thousands of miles away from Iran, in the stagnant streams and rice paddies of Southeast Asia, lurks the tentacled snake (Erpeton tentaculatum), named for two antenna-like appendages that protrude from its nose. Living most of their lives in water, tentacled snakes feast primarily on fish, a difficult prey to catch given their extraordinarily quick reflexes when they sense a disturbance in the water.

Rather than outswimming their fishy food, though, tentacled snakes outsmart them. To hunt, they bend their body, which resembles a waterlogged branch, into a “J” shape, with their head curved around parallel to their neck. When a fish swims by, the snake twitches its neck, a movement so rapid that it can only be captured on high-speed film. Instinctively the fish darts in the other direction, where the tentacled fish’s distinctive head strikes. At times, the fish even swims directly into the snake’s open mouth.

乘风破浪 (Cheng feng po lang): “To have great ambitions”

Flying snake

Five known species of snake across Southeast Asia (genus Chrysopelea) can “fly,” or, more accurately, glide. Although they have no wings and can’t necessarily gain elevation, the abilities of these limbless reptiles are still nothing short of uncanny.

When a flying snake launches itself from a branch, it unfurls its ribs and muscles to create a flatter, wider figure more suitable for floating through the air. Once airborne, the snake stabilizes itself with strategic undulations of its body. These movements might look like random, snaky wiggles, but really they are the calculated key to why this snake is even better at soaring than the flying squirrel.

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Some scientists who study these slinging serpents’ ability to “fly” hope the snake’s versatility can be used in robotic development, particularly to create search and rescue devices to fit through the rubble of natural disasters.

塞翁失马 (焉知非福) (Sai weng shi ma (yan zhi fei fu)): “Not all bad comes to cause harm”

Tiger keelback

Beautiful Tiger Keelback Snake

Many snakes produce their own venom, but the resourceful tiger keelback (Rhabdophis tigrinus) robs its toxic fluids from amphibians instead.

This serpent, native to East and Southeast Asia, feeds on poisonous toads that contain the neurotoxic compound bufadienolide. Rather than succumbing to the sometimes fatal effects of this poison, the tiger keelback stores it in glands behind its head, where it can later secrete the poison when it feels threatened, in a process called “toxin sequestration.”

Though all tiger keelbacks snack on poisonous toads, some crave the amphibians more than others. Pregnant tiger keelbacks have been shown to go to greater lengths to hunt down these toads than male or non-gestating females, which prefer the more readily available tree frogs of their habitats. But mothers-to-be, now eating poison for two, hunt toads more actively so that they can pass the defensive bufadienolide stores off to their young, which are born too small to swallow toads themselves.

夸大其词 (Kua da qi ci): “Exaggerate”

Dice snake

Different dice snake (Natrix tessellata) populations are known to exhibit varying defensive behaviors, but the ones of Golem Grad Island in North Macedonia have been found to take it to an especially theatrical degree: They play dead. When grabbed by a predator, these dice snakes writhe, vomit and poop before finally going limp. As a cherry on top of the performance, some even bleed from their gaping mouths.

“One of my first times working with the dice snake, I was like, ‘Did I accidentally kill it?’” says Vukašin Bjelica, who researches the death-feigning behavior of dice snakes as a doctoral student at the University of Belgrade. “But of course it was just a defense. As soon as I released the snake, it came back to life miraculously and slithered away.”

The oozing blood is one of the things that still puzzles and fascinates Bjelica, and one of the questions he’s hoping to answer in future studies. “Sometimes it’s a drop of blood, sometimes it’s mouthfuls of blood,” he says. Among his theories, Bjelica wonders if the blood might have chemical communication properties that allow a death-feigning snake to warn other snakes that it is being attacked.