ABOVE: An olive sea snake swimming toward an underwater photographer's camera
JACK BREEDON
Olive sea snakes (Aipysurus laevis) are notorious for approaching divers. The animals have been known to swim right up to an unexpecting person and lick them, and they’ve even pursued people who’ve attempted to flee—behaviors markedly different from those of their land-based kin. Marine ecologist Tim Lynch and his colleagues may have figured out why: based on data from Lynch’s firsthand experience with sea snake encounters, the researchers concluded that the animals simply get confused and mistake divers for fellow sea snakes or other marine life.
The discovery began in the early ’90s, when Lynch, now a research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, was working on his doctorate. He had received money from the Lion’s Club of Townsville to study dangerous marine creatures, and at first he thought he’d study cone ...
