“Bursting through all obstacles and traversing all distances” (Plin., NH 8.35.86): spatial memory of snakes in light of ancient literary accounts

Until recently, scientists believed snakes to have little spatial ability. However, new behavioural experiments have proven that snakes display a capacity for spatial learning, and therefore possess spatial memory. Beginning with Homer, the snake appears throughout antiquity in all possible literary genres. The considerable amount of the extant ancient literary source material leads to the following research question: Did the Greeks and Romans attribute the snake with a fully-functional spatial memory based on their observations of the animal’s behaviour? The answer is positive. It was believed in antiquity that the snake had a well-developed spatial memory. According to the ancient authors, vision was the basic sense that allowed the snake to travel efficiently and to remember its path. The ancients had many occasions (in public and private spaces) to learn about the behaviour of the reptile. The ancient authors describing the behaviour of the snake most often relied on knowledge collected through numerous incidents of contact with the animal. Although the extant accounts are comprised mostly of anecdotes and sometimes myths, a critical analysis of these accounts indicates that the ancient authors were interested in the abilities of the snake that have only just started to gain recognition in modern science.