A mother’s love knows no bounds and this applies to even the most cold-blooded creatures on the planet. Female African pythons not only incubate their eggs, they also snuggle their babies at night to keep them warm, according to a new study in the Journal of Zoology
"This is the first-ever report of maternal care of babies in an egg-laying snake," says Professor Graham Alexander, from the Wits School of Animal Plant and Environmental Sciences, in a statement. The cuddle puddles last about two weeks before mum gives her babies a boot out into the harsh world.
Snakes are cold-blooded, meaning they are unable to regulate their body temperature like mammals. Some snakes are able to elevate their metabolism to warm their eggs, but not these python mommas. Instead, during the day they head to the nest entrance to soak up the sun’s heat until their body reaches temperatures of up to almost 40°C (104°F) – just a few degrees shy of lethal temperatures. At night, mom heads inside and coils around the eggs, keeping them protected, warm, and secure in their cozy family nest.
And you thought your mom had boundary issues.
Parental care isn’t generally associated with reptiles, but motherhood comes at a cost across the animal kingdom, and African pythons are no different. For example, female pythons don’t eat during the breeding cycle – a period of more than six months – and lose 40 percent of their body mass over this time. They also turn black while breeding, an adaptation that Alexander coined “facultative melanism”, which probably increases their rate of heating while indulging in some sun.
"All of this takes its toll on mother pythons: they take a long time to recover after breeding and so can only produce a clutch every second or third year, depending on how many meals they are able to catch in the months after leaving the nest. Some of them never recover,” said Alexander.
Alexander’s research is based on seven years of intensive fieldwork in South Africa, where he tracked 37 pythons with radio transmitters. Eight of the pythons laid eggs in aardvark burrows, where their breeding behavior was recorded with cameras in the nests.
And just like in the human world, males relentlessly pester their female love interests – some male pythons follow receptive females around for months.
"In one case, one male was recorded following a female for more than 2 kilometers [1.2 miles] over a three-month period," says Alexander.
Other live-bearing snakes exhibit maternal care. Rattlesnakes will also stay with their young, and in some cases, mothers work together and take shifts to look after their babies.
Alexander says our misunderstanding about parental nurture in snakes could be more a result of the lack of research on reptiles than their actual behavior.
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