So I was walking down a trail by my house today and I stumbled upon a 2 1/2 foot garter snake. Of course the first thing I did was run after it and pick it up because... you know... that's what normal people do. Anyways, when I looked closely at it I could tell it definitely had some minor injuries so I took it home to hoping I could help it out. It was especially more wounded on the tail and back third of the body. I set up an enclosure for it, and when I took it out I set her down just to see if it could slither properly, which it did, but when I went to pick it back up it froze and began to thrash the back third of its body. I kept the front 2/3s of its body completely still in a straight line. I was like "What the heck!" This happened several times, and I began to realize that the vast majority of its injuries were on the back third of the body and tail.

I know that some animals have fake faces or eyes to fool predators, and some snakes use their tails as lures for small prey, but this looks like it is trying to get the predator to attack its tail area instead of its head on purpose. I have never heard of this before. Has anyone else heard about or seen behavior like this? Most people don't associate snakes with being intelligent but this proves that snakes can learn certain behaviors to survive.