{"id":27484,"date":"2019-07-02T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=27484"},"modified":"2019-07-02T00:09:39","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T05:09:39","slug":"apsu-graduate-student-captures-three-cottonmouth-males-battle-on-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2019\/07\/02\/apsu-graduate-student-captures-three-cottonmouth-males-battle-on-video\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU graduate student captures three cottonmouth males battle on video"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Austin Peay State University (APSU) graduate student Claire Ciafre captured a video on June 4th of three cottonmouth males fighting it out near Huntsville, Alabama.<\/p>\n

The video starts with two cottonmouths jockeying in an Alabama swamp. Their heads sway above the water, each snake trying to find the best position.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/a>

Three male cottonmouths battle for the rights to mate with a nearby female near Huntsville, Alabama. (Screen captures from video\/Claire Ciafre)
Claire_Ciafre: Austin Peay graduate student Claire Ciafre captured the video on June 4 near Huntsville, Alabama, while doing research for her thesis.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Within seconds a third cottonmouth swims into the shot. The fight quickly escalates, and the snakes wrestle more furiously in an effort to pin each other or tire each other out.<\/p>\n

The three cottonmouths are males, and the winner claims a valuable prize: the right to mate with a nearby female.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually happened upon the cottonmouths while doing work for my thesis,\u201d said Ciafre, who\u2019s studying new wetland plant communities. \u201cI\u2019ve been helping members of the APSU herpetology lab catch cottonmouths for their research, so I\u2019d certainly seen them before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never seen that behavior, however, and incorrectly assumed they were mating,\u201d she added. \u201cI thought it looked cool and figured it would make my lab-mates jealous, so I took the video.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rare Video Gains In Popularity<\/h3>\n

She posted the video to her Facebook page on June 7th. A week later, Dr. Chris Gienger \u2013 APSU\u2019s curator of herpetology \u2013 posted the video to the Herpetology at Austin Peay State University Facebook page. The video quickly gained popularity and by July 1st hit 168,000 views on the herpetology page.<\/p>\n

\n

[fbvideo link=”https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/watch\/?v=462930584511420″ width=”500″ height=”400″ onlyvideo=”1″]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gienger told Ciafre the video showed three male cottonmouths competing to determine who mated with a nearby female (not captured in the video). Cottonmouth battles are not commonly observed and capturing one on high-quality video (such as Ciafre\u2019s) is even more rare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two \u2018losers\u2019 will ultimately give up and leave,\u201d Ciafre said. \u201cI imagine that the losers either get too exhausted to continue or just realize it\u2019s not worth the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means that only the biggest, strongest and\/or healthiest males will contribute to the gene pool.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[320center]<\/p>\n

\u2018Worth Our Respect And Appreciation\u2019<\/h3>\n

Ciafre hopes the video\u2019s popularity will help counter the negative stigma surrounding snakes, especially venomous ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely didn\u2019t expect the video to be as successful as it was,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were negative comments and seeing them was a bit disheartening.<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay graduate student Claire Ciafre captured the video on June 4th near Huntsville, Alabama, while doing research for her thesis. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI think (the video has) been as popular as it has because it\u2019s a behavior that few people have seen in snakes,\u201d Ciafre added. \u201cGetting people curious about a behavior, and then therefore the animal, is the first step to getting them to accept that animal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope my video helped some to realize that these animals can be fascinating and worth our respect and appreciation.\u201d<\/p>\n

More About Ciafre’s Research<\/h3>\n

Ciafre wasn\u2019t in Alabama studying snakes. She\u2019s comparing and describing new wetland plant communities, specifically in the eastern Highland Rim, a mostly flat strip of land running from Kentucky through Tennessee east of Murfreesboro and into Alabama.<\/p>\n

[320right]\u201cThis area used to be covered in prairie, and remnants of that can still be found in open wetlands because they were too wet to plow or build on,\u201d she said. \u201cThe wetlands I\u2019m looking at have a lot of plants that are usually found along the coast, so it has really interesting implications for what the historic prairies of Tennessee may have looked like and how they\u2019ll respond to climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ciafre is collecting samples from 14 sites this summer and fall; she collected from 16 sites last year.<\/p>\n

To Learn More<\/h3>\n

For more about Austin Peay State University\u2019s Department of Biology, visit www.apsu.edu\/biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Austin Peay State University (APSU) graduate student Claire Ciafre captured a video on June 4th of three cottonmouth males fighting it out near Huntsville, Alabama. The video starts with two cottonmouths jockeying in an Alabama swamp. Their heads sway above the water, each snake trying to find the best position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,6367,19623,262,16967,33805,512,825,33806,33807,22273],"class_list":["post-27484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","tag-apsu","tag-apsu-department-of-biology","tag-apsu-graduate-student","tag-austin-peay-state-university","tag-chris-gienger","tag-clair-ciafre","tag-clarksville","tag-clarksville-tn","tag-cottonmouth","tag-herpetology","tag-huntsville-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-79i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27485,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27484\/revisions\/27485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}