How a Bamboo Pit Viper Hunts

• Kingdom: Animalia
• Phylum: Chordata
• Class: Reptilia
• Order: Squamata
• Suborder: Serpentes
• Family: Viperidae
• Genus: Trimeresurus
• Scientific Name: Trimeresurus Gramineus

Bamboo Pit Viper often hunts invisibly from above, flourishing and remote forests as well as nearby plantations. And usually the pit viper comes in contact with us. When surprised it often chooses fight over flight. 

The bamboo pit viper is found throughout Southeast Asia. But across the islands of Indonesia, this small pit viper causes up to 50% of all venomous bites. Human fatalities are rare, but birds, small frogs and rodents may not be so lucky. Once hidden, the bamboo pit viper uses a combination of tools to hunt.

First, the snake uses its tongue like a nose to track its prey, sticking it into the air to pick up scent molecules. Its two fork tips deposit the molecules into the Jacobson's organ, located on the roof its mouth. This organ tells the brain if these scents are from a potential meal. Once locked onto a scent, the ambush hunter settles into place and waits, hanging motionless, coiled in a characteristic S shape ready to pounce. As a prey approaches, the pit viper employs its most remarkable trait---its pits.

These pit shaped organs contain membranes that sense the heat given off by warm-blooded prey. The snake processes the information with the same part of its brain as it uses for vision. Resulting in a thermal image, superimposed up to the visual one. This enables the pit viper to hone in on its target with pinpoint accuracy. Hinged fangs rest against the roof of the mouth, ready to pop open like a switchblade for the strike. They pierce deep into the mouse, delivering a hemo toxin that begins working immediately, breaking down and destroying blood vessels and causing massive internal bleeding. Once the toxin takes effect, the bamboo pit viper uses its fangs to walk the prey into its mouth headfirst and whole.