The fat shiner swam the 6' length of the 125 gallon aquarium in less than a second. It disappeared from this earth about 5 seconds later.

First I was watching it and thinking how gracefully it sped through and around the waterlogged snags. And even knowing the fish's purpose in the tank, I was unprepared for the speed and dexterity of that strike by the nearest tentacled snake, Erpeton tentaculatum.



The strike wasn't unexpected. I had been keeping and breeding tentacled snakes for several years. In fact, the only difference was that I had more than doubled the size of the shiners proffered. What had been unexpected was the speed - mere seconds were involved - with which the snake caught and swallowed the prey.

For those of you not familiar with the tentacled snake, it is a fully aquatic homolopsine species that occurs widely over Southeast Asia. It attains a length of two to two and a half feet and inhabits quiet, often silted waters. The genus contains only a single species with two distinctly different patterns, a blotched and a striped.

It is a live-bearing species. The "tentacles" (actually two short rostral projections), are sensory and seemingly assist the snake in locating their piscine prey in waters having limited visibility.

More photos below...