The reptile uses its two head tentacles to "see" and pursue prey in murky lakes and slow-moving rivers in Southeast Asia, researchers have discovered. (See snake pictures.)

"When I first saw these things in ... [a] zoo I thought, What the heck? They were an irresistible mystery," said study leader Ken Catania, a biologist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Catania and colleagues observed that the tentacled snake hunts in a strange way: It forms a J with its body, slightly moving its lower midsection when fish swim by. This movement usually causes a fish to dart in the opposite direction, straight toward the snake's mouth.