Limbless wonder

A secretive snake that performs cartwheels to escape from danger

- Stuart Blackman

Considering their lack of limbs, snakes have an impressive range of locomotory styles. Apart from the obvious slithering and sliding, they can climb, swim, burrow and some can even glide. And now we can add cartwheeling to the list.

Biologists working in Malaysia observed the unusual behaviour in the dwarf reed snake, a small, secretive, nocturnal species that spends the day hidden under rocks or amongst leaf litter. As they document in the journal