A kangaroo rat escaped the attack of a rattlesnake with a "ninja" kick faster than a wink of an eye

(Research shows that kangaroo rats often frustrate large numbers of predators by combining fast reaction times, powerful jumps and impressive kicks.) Drea Cornejo / The Washington Post)

A wide-eyed kangaroo rat is plunged into darkness among the scattered tufts of desert plant life. But The tiny rodent is not alone in the desert of Arizona. Just a few centimeters, a dead rattler waiting, waiting for his next meal.

The cunning predator hurls its prey, an attack at the speed of lightning that many other living creatures would probably mean certain death. But in less than a second, the snake is on the ground with nothing but dust in its mouth and the kangaroo rat is thrown to freedom.

However, the heartbreaking escape of the rat is not just luck, according to two articles published this week by a team of researchers from San Diego State University, University of California Riverside and the University of California at Davis.

Animals that inhabit the desert of western North America they have a pretty impressive arsenal of evasive maneuvers, which include, to the scientists' surprise, the opportunity to offer blows in the air to "ninja style" in a split second, according to a press release released Wednesday.

For years, whenever a kangaroo rat avoided becoming a rattlesnake meal, Grace Freymiller and Malachi Whitford, PhD students at San Diego State University who wrote the papers, have always asked themselves the same question: What happened?

"You see a motion blur and then the kangaroo rat is gone, and you have no idea what happened"Whitford told the Washington Post, at most, every battle between the snake and the rat lasts about 700 milliseconds, or 0.7 seconds, he said.

The mystery deepens when it seemed that in sometimes the rats were bittenbut they were not dying, Whitford said.

"It was a bit weird"he said. "We really could not tell what was going on, but we knew that something strange was going on"

Using high speed cameras, Freymiller and Whitford took a team of investigators to the desert outside Yuma, Arizona, looking for answers. When they viewed their images in slow motion, they could not believe what they were seeing.

Freymiller told The Post that she had only thought: "Santa Mi ***".

"It was amazing"Whitford said.

Freymiller thinks it's the first video of this genre, you can clearly see a kangaroo rat jumping in the air and throwing a powerful double kick to the head of a rattlesnake. The video shows the snake flying in the air, his body hitting the ground while the rat disappears from sight. Researchers have downloaded clips of acrobatic adventures on a YouTube channel called "Rat Ninja" and, early Friday, a video had accumulated over 92,000 hits.

"It seemed crazy"said Freymiller. "Everything happened so fast that we could not imagine that they had enough time to perform a maneuver like that. They are so fast, it's amazing. "

The researchers found that with a time of attack less than 100 milliseconds, rattlesnakes are fast, but kangaroo rats are faster, after studying more 30 interactions. On average, the rats had reaction times of about 70 milliseconds and some started jumping to just 38 milliseconds of the snake attack, according to the statement.

"Basically, how to react before you can close your eyelidWhitford told The Post, adding that humans are taking about 150 milliseconds flashing.

Although several videos show rats dodging snakes throwing themselves high in the air, they use kicks when they can not escape fast enoughRulon Clark, an badociate professor of biology at San Diego State University and co-author of the two research papers, says in the release.

"Rats"Clark said, they could escape "by reorienting themselves in the air and using their huge legs to kick ninja snakes"

The kick and the speed with which it is inflicted are fundamental to the rat survivalWhitford said at the post office.

"They limit the time of venom injection by snakes," he said of rats. "They do not receive a full dose of poison that is enough to neutralize them. "

Without poison, a rattlesnake bite, similar to a "little sting"it's relatively harmless, he said. In a video, a snake seems to bite the hairy body of the kangaroo rat, but a quick kick the head moves its fangs allowing the small martial artist to escape.

Beyond documenting the impressive fighting skills, Whitford said that researchers now believe that animal self-defense tactics they are much more complex than "random shots". He reported a case in which a kangaroo rat returned to hit a snake instead of jumping. When the snake recoiled, the rat got up and jumped into a safe place.

"The movements seem really determined and directed"he said. "It seems that he is currently processing information about what the snake does, the best way to escape this attack and then give that answer … Being able to process this kind of information at this point it's just amazing. "

In social networks, the masterful defense techniques of rats have been announced as "epic".

But aside from creating fans of "Ninja Rat", Freymiller said he hopes the investigation "to get people to better appreciate the environment around them", especially the deserts.

"We just want people to know that they are not necessarily lifeless habitats"he said. "It's worth protecting them, it's worthwhile to appreciate. these amazing animals who do things beyond what we could imagine. "