Cuddly coils

Stanley - Thursday

Michael and I are desperately trying to meet a February 28 deadline for our new thriller, DEAD OF NIGHT, which is due to be published in the UK in July.  Here's a sneak preview of the cover.

Deadlines are often accompanied by frequent distractions.  It is easier to read about the Pennsylvania special election or watch South Africa beat Australia in the second test (that took four days!) or do profound research on the internet, than it is to write the denouement of the book.

So, when I read Annamaria's Monday blog on Reptiles, I started wondering about motherhood.  Are snakes good mothers?  Do they look after their kids or do they just kick them out and let them fend for themselves?

Given the deadline, I couldn't go overboard on the research, but I did find one fascinating article about a snake that is common in South Africa - the southern African python.

Southern African python

The first tidbit that was new to me was that only 70% of the world's snakes are oviparous.  That is, they lay eggs.  The rest are viviparous, giving birth to live babies.  Oviparous snakes tend to live in warm climates because the warmth helps the snakes to incubate the eggs.

Needless to say, pythons lay eggs.

And what the female has to go through is remarkable.

Graham Alexander, a researcher at my alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, has spent years doing field studies on snakes at the Dinokeng Game Reserve just north of Pretoria.

He reports that the female pythons do not eat during the six-month breeding cycle and lose about 40% of their weight.  They also turn black, which helps them get hotter, which in turn, helps incubation.  Unlike other python species , which can raise their body temperature metabolically, the southern Africa python has to rely on the sun.

When the python basks in the sun, its body temperature rises about 5°C to about 40°C, which is close to being lethal.  It then wraps itself around the eggs to provide warmth.

When the babies hatch, they spend each night for about two weeks within their mother's warm coils.  This is the first time egg-laying snakes have been to show maternal care after giving birth.

Fascinating.

Graham Alexander with baby pythons

Now I have to see if a python has a role in the last chapters of the thriller.

Updates:

Thanks to all of you who sent good wishes for my quick recovery.  I am much better and sleeping through the night, but still have a tenacious sinus infection that keeps me pretty tired the whole time.

We had some light rain in Cape Town last evening.  Probably not enough to make a significant difference to the reservoirs, but what a pleasure!

(I found the information in this blog in Dave Chambers' article titled Coils and cuddles: python babies feel the love from mom in Times Select.)