Snakes are cold-blooded animals and a kind of variable temperature animals, their own body temperature will change with the temperature of the surrounding environment, they can not control their body temperature, especially in the ice and snow season, snakes must hibernate to survive. In the Qinghai-Tibet high principle of life is a kind of Snake unique to China - hot spring snake, they can live on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at an altitude of 4500 meters, so how do hot spring snakes survive in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at high altitude and low temperature?
Hot spring snakes are endemic to China
The hot spring snake is arguably the most luxurious snake in the world, living every day is to soak in the hot springs, look at the snowy mountains, and then eat sashimi. Hot spring snakes belong to the snake family, the appearance and ordinary water snakes, belong to the non-venomous small and medium-sized snakes, body length of 0.7 meters - 1 meters or so, mainly live near the hot springs at an altitude of about 4500 meters, mainly distributed in the mainland of Tibet, Yunnan and Sichuan, the three regions of life hot spring snakes far away from each other for tens of millions of years, so they embark on different evolutionary paths, the hot spring snakes in the mainland can be divided into three kinds, namely The Tibetan hot spring snake, the Sichuan hot spring snake and the Yunnan hot spring snake.
Why do hot spring snakes choose to live on the Tibetan Plateau?
Hot spring snakes are the only snakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and they choose to live on the harsh environment of the Tibetan Plateau because of the result of the movement of the earth's crust. 40 million years ago, the collision of the Indian Ocean plate and the Eurasian plate led to the uplift of the Himalayas, and the land behind the Himalayas also became higher with the uplift of the earth's crust, thus slowly forming the world's highest plateau, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
The ancestors of the hot spring snake originally lived at tropical sea level, and as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau rose upwards, other snakes became extinct due to severe cold, but the ancestors of the hot spring snake survived because they lived near the hot springs, and they lived on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau because of the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Because hot spring snakes must rely on the heat brought by hot springs to survive, this leads to their limited range of survival, and once they leave the hot springs for a distance, they will die of hypothermia.
Studies have shown that the geothermal resources under the hot springs can increase the temperature around the surface by more than 70 degrees, and the heat brought by geothermal heat can create a small ecosystem near the hot springs, which can allow the survival of cold-blooded animals such as snakes.
How do hot spring snakes survive in the snow and ice?
The climate of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is very harsh, even in the summer, the average temperature does not exceed 15 degrees, and the temperature difference in a day is particularly large, and the hot spring snake can only ensure that it has the temperature conditions to survive all year round in the locations where geothermal resources are abundant. In addition, the hot spring snake distribution area should also have sufficient food sources and be suitable for dodging stone crevices or caves.
The heat brought by geothermal heat not only benefits the hot spring snake, but also the frogs and fish living in the hot springs enjoy the benefits of geothermal heat, frogs are also cold-blooded animals, they can only survive in the environment with a suitable temperature, and the fish in the hot springs benefit from the heat brought by geothermal heat to grow, and the hot spring snakes living near the hot springs can just feed on frogs and fish.
The heat from geothermal heat not only warms the icy stream, but also warms the rock crevices on the banks of the stream, which can serve as snake holes for hot spring snakes, which most of the time except for fishing in hot springs will choose to hide in the snake holes. The research team has tested that the temperature of this snake cave is maintained at about 27 degrees celsius all year round, which is far more than 10 degrees higher than the temperature in the open place outside the cave. Therefore, the choice of habitat of the hot spring snake just verifies the results of the species's long-term adaptation to the natural environment.
The current situation of the hot spring snake
Hot spring snakes live in a very special environment, they can only live near the hot springs, once too far away from the hot springs will be due to low body temperature and death, hot spring snakes for the living environment is very demanding, once the geothermal resources are destroyed means that the nearby hot spring snakes will be extinct. In addition, the reproductive ability of hot spring snakes is very poor, and female snakes in the breeding period can only lay about 6 snake eggs at a time, and due to the special living environment, the success rate of hatching their snake eggs is much lower than that of other snakes, which has led to the inability to increase the number of hot spring snakes on a large scale. To this end, in 2021, the state will list three kinds of hot spring snakes as national first-level protected animals for protection.