One the predator the other a prey, yet in the tiny island of Seahorse Key on the central Gulf Coast swarming with numerous poisonous cottonmouth snakes, birds survive copiously.
About 600 vipers slither around the 165-acre (67-hectare) island, in some areas with an average of 22 cottonmouths on every palm tree-covered acre.
All snakes are carnivorous, eating small animals including lizards and other snakes, rodents and other small mammals, birds, eggs or insects. However this island has no fresh water and only a scant number of mammals to prey upon. So why are the snakes not finishing off all the birds?
Harvey Lillywhite, a University of Florida biologist who has been studying the island feels that tens of thousands of seabirds that nest there from spring to fall provide these snakes with huge amounts of dead fish that the birds drop, vomit, and excrete every year.
These snakes also turn protectors of the birds, refraining others from attacking the birds nests as well.
So wild life changes its attitude according to nature’s needs yet man fails to do the same.
Source: National Geographic
