SNAKES ALIVE

Penguins might have cause to worry but rat snakes are in good shape when it comes to global warming, according to University of Illinois researchers who spent a dozen years studying rat snakes in Texas, southern Illinois and Canada to determine where they go and what they do when it gets hot. It turns out that the snakes, which are harmless unless you’re a bird or small mammal, actually benefit from warmer weather, and so they might become more prolific in northern climes as glaciers and Arctic ice disappear. As the weather gets hotter, the snakes become nocturnal, which is bad news for birds, says Patrick J. Weatherhead, a professor of natural resources and environmental sciences whose research team surgically implanted transmitters into nearly 200 snakes. A snake that hunts during daylight hours is likely to find just eggs when it slithers into a nest, Weatherhead says, but a snake at night is likely to find a dozing bird. The U.S. Army and the Army Corps of Engineers helped pay for the study. Weatherhead isn’t sure why, but suspects that the army has an interest in wildlife habitat owing to the amount of land it owns that is home to endangered species. “I’m happy they have an interest because it allows me to pursue some of the things I’m interested in,” Weatherhead says.