🇺🇸 영어 원문
An international research team led by scientists in Canada has uncovered a likely explanation for one of the more unusual features of snake development: why embryos curl into tight spirals before hatching. This coiling behavior appears to help snakes accommodate the exceptionally long bodies that distinguish them from every other vertebrate.
The findings, published in Current Biology, suggest that the spiral forms as the embryo’s body rapidly lengthens while its gut acts as a tether. That physical constraint causes the growing body to buckle and twist into a right-handed coil.
"It’s like when you adjust the length of a strap and the longer, buckling side of the loop twists," explains senior author and team leader Dr. Tetsuto Miyashita, evolutionary biologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature.
The discovery adds snake embryos to a long list of naturally occurring spiral structures that scientists are still working to understand.
"There is a touch of mystery to spirals, and we are only beginning to understand how these shapes are produced in animals, such as our looping intestine, snail shells, and now these beautifully coiled snake embryos," says lead author Alexandra Weber, now a graduate student in zoology at the University of British Columbia.
Adds Miyashita: "These puzzles beckon our curiosity. After all, spiral forms in nature have inspired human creations ranging from rotini pasta, to a barber’s pole or even portrayals of the biblical 'Tower of Babel'."
The project itself grew out of an unusual circumstance. During the COVID lockdown in 2020, Miyashita was working from home and looking for a research question his students could investigate without access to laboratories or museum collections.
"Then the lightbulb turned on. I had inherited from my PhD advisor this fascination with asymmetries in animal forms. So every time I saw images of snake embryos in papers, I wondered whether they are right- or left-handed in their coiling."
Miyashita asked Weber, who was then at Carleton University, along with two undergraduate students at the University of Ottawa, to search published research and museum databases for photographs of developing snakes.
"We obtained pictures for more than 900 embryos from 39 snake and other limbless squamate species. That’s a statistically robust sample."
A clear pattern emerged. During the first several weeks after the eggs were laid, the embryos appeared to coil only dextrally, meaning to the right, as viewed from head to tail.
"At these stages, the embryos don’t have muscles to move with, so different forces are making them coil right-handed," Weber explains. "But we didn’t know what’s making them do that."
Because the embryos were not yet capable of actively moving their bodies into position, the researchers suspected that some physical feature of their development was creating the twist.
A crucial clue came from Dr. Raul Diaz, a collaborator at California State University Los Angeles. Diaz used CT imaging to examine snake embryos in greater anatomical detail.
"Raul’s CT scan of a snake embryo revealed a structure we had never seen before ¾ it was a pillar of gut stretching through the spiral of the coiling body," Miyashita says. "There’s an intestine detached from the rest of the body, surrounded by tendrils of blood vessels from the yolk."
🇰🇷 한국어 요약
캐나다 연구팀을 포함한 국제 연구진이 뱀의 배아가 알 안에서 오른쪽으로 나선 모양으로 감기는 이유를 밝혀냈어요. 뱀은 다른 척추동물에 비해 몸이 매우 길기 때문에, 알 안에서 몸이 자랄 때 길이와 형태를 조절하는 기작이 필요해요. 연구 결과, 배아의 몸이 빠르게 길어지는 동안 장이 고정점처럼 작용하면서 몸이 오른쪽 나선으로 꺾이는 것으로 나타났어요. 연구진은 39개 종의 뱀 배아 사진 900장 이상을 분석해 대부분 오른쪽으로 감기는 일관된 패턴을 확인했어요. 또한 CT 촬영으로 나선 내부에서 장이 기둥처럼 뻗어 있는 새로운 구조를 발견했어요. 이 연구는 자연에서 보이는 나선 구조, 예를 들어 내장이나 달팽이 껍질, 뱀 배아 같은 형태가 어떻게 만들어지는지를 이해하는 데 도움을 줘요. 코로나19 기간에 집에서 진행될 수 있는 연구 질문을 찾던 중 시작된 이 프로젝트는 청소년들에게 생물학과 과학 탐구의 재미를 느낄 수 있는 좋은 예시가 될 수 있어요.
🔑 핵심 단어 (Vocabulary)
- embryo – 배아 – why embryos curl into tight spirals before hatching.
- coil – 나선으로 감다, 감기다 – the growing body to buckle and twist into a right-handed coil.
- vertebrate – 척추동물 – distinguish them from every other vertebrate.
- accommodate – 맞다, 적응하다 – help snakes accommodate the exceptionally long bodies.
- lengthen – 길어지다, 길게 하다 – the embryo’s body rapidly lengthens.
- buckle – 꺾이다, 굽어지다 – causes the growing body to buckle and twist.
- dextrally – 오른쪽으로 – the embryos appeared to coil only dextrally.
- asymmetries – 비대칭, 비대칭적인 형태들 – fascination with asymmetries in animal forms.
- anatomical – 해부학적인 – examine snake embryos in greater anatomical detail.
- robust – 탄탄한, 확실한 – That’s a statistically robust sample.
🔗 원문 링크
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901070516.htm