The medium-sized and venomous snake is exclusively native to the Americas and uses a structure consisting of horn rings at the end of the tail to produce a warning sound – the famous rattle – when danger threatens. This scares enemies so effectively that many other animals, such as non-venomous snakes, imitate the sound. But how does rattling actually work? Scientists have now gotten to the bottom of this.
Don’t worry, we’ll get to the rattlesnake in a moment. But to begin with, it should be noted that turtles and cheetahs have more in common than meets the eye. In all vertebrates, locomotor behavior is controlled by so-called neuronal networks in the brain stem and spinal cord. It doesn’t matter if they are lame or champion sprinters. Whether they move their wings like seagulls at a frequency of three hertz or rattle quickly like rattlesnakes at a frequency of 100 hertz. Researchers from the Institute of Biology of the University of Graz have discovered that a very specific protein is responsible for the rapid processing of motor commands.
The rattlesnake is a very special animal in this respect, “because it both crawls slowly and makes very fast movements with the famous rattling sound of its tail,” describe Maximilian Bothe and the neurobiologist Boris Chagnaud from the Institute of Biology of the University of Graz.
What makes muscles faster
The international research team has now solved the question of what makes vertebrate muscles move faster with the help of the rattlesnake, the University of Graz announced on Tuesday.
For rattlesnakes, it is important that the fast movement rhythms are performed accurately in order to communicate acoustically with other rattlesnakes. They have two different central pattern generators (CPG) in their spinal cord that produce different movements: slow ones for locomotion and fast muscle contractions used for the typical rattling sound.
Visually, these CPGs are barely distinguishable from each other. The researchers have recognized that certain physiological differences in nerve cells significantly influence muscle control and therefore determine how and when a muscle contracts.
So can you make turtles faster?
In a next step, the team even managed to increase the influence of these proteins and thus convert slow properties into fast properties. However, it is unlikely that both slow vertebrates and humans can become sprint runners by consuming these proteins. The processing of the movement sequences is “a complex interaction of many components,” as Bothe dispelled such expectations.
Source: Krone
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