Mela's post did a good job setting out what a typical day is like for my research. Here, I'm just going to go into a bit more detail about how I actually document the gap-crossing behaviors of the snakes.
My experimental setup is two artificial branches. One one side, I set up a bunch of leaves and branches that the snake likes to go toward, which makes it the "target" branch. This target can be moved around to make bigger gaps, and turned sideways to present a wide target. I set up a bunch of cameras to film from different angles, put little marks on the snake (in non-toxic acrylic paint that comes off easily) so I can see it clearly in the video, and stick it on the "origin" branch. Often the snakes will cross from the origin to the target all by themselves, once they realize the nice branches and leaves are over there, or sometimes I give them a little tap on the tail to get them started.
That's pretty much it! The two main questions I'm trying to answer in this project are 1) at what gap size do the snakes switch from the standard behavior (crawling straight across) to doing little hops or lunges and 2) how do the kinematics of their larger jumps compare to similar jumps in the flying snakes. To answer the first question, I start the snakes with a small gap and gradually increase it until they change from crawling straight across to doing the hops. For the second question, I set up the target branch to be a wide target at a single distance, and try to get them to jump five times. I will then go back and set up the same gap for the flying snakes in the lab and record their kinematics, for comparison.
A lot of the work comes in the analysis. By filming from different views, I'm able to reconstruct a 3D representation of the snake, with the help of some software and a lot of time and effort :) Once I have the 3D locations of the points I marked on the snake, I can then figure out how fast the snake moves, what accelerations it experiences, what shapes it takes to perform the lunges and jumps, etc. All of these things can be compared to the flying snakes, helping us understand the differences in the two species.
My project has been made possible by generous support from the National Geographic Society, the Company of Biologists, and the VT Graduate Student Association