Do you know which snake plays dead?

Everyone knows that dogs can be trained to play dead. But did you know that a snake has picked up the trick as well?

The hognose snake is a great actor. It’s a harmless snake, but when it feels threatened, it will rear back, hiss, and flatten out its head into a hood, just like a cobra! It will even pretend to strike at the animal attacking it, though it’s actually very reluctant to get close enough to bite. Most animals are frightened off by this display, but a few are bold enough to continue their attack.

If that happens, the hognose snake tries another approach: it plays dead! The snake rolls over onto its back with its tongue hanging out of its mouth. To complete the illusion, the snake oozes a foul-smelling fluid from its body so that it more closely resembles a dead and rotting animal. Since many predatory animals are reluctant to eat anything that’s been dead long enough to stink (the longer an animal has been dead, the more likely it is to make a predator sick), most predators give up and walk away, leaving the hognose free to act another day.

In fact, the hognose snake is so committed to its performance that if you roll it over onto its stomach, it will flip back over again as though insisting “no, I really am dead!”