In search of Britain's most dangerous wild animal

so good morning everybody today I'm in search of what is arguably Britain's most dangerous wild animal it's been responsible for deaths and for a number of serious injuries yet I hope to convince you that it's a platted animal that's deserving not only of our respect but also our support this is Steve Deeley for wild Walks In Search of Britain's wild adders [Music] thank you [Music] this is a wild adder it's a male showing the characteristic series of black diamonds down his back that are all you need to identify an adder in the wild as a cold-blooded and need the sun's warmth to be able to move quickly and even to digest their prey able to climb trees and even swim adders will feed on frogs toads and lizards on small mammals and on the chicks of ground nesting Birds using a powerful Venom that can even affect humans so let's address the elephant in the room our Riders really dangerous well they carry a Venom but the adder is a true Viper it has a set of hollow fangs that lie horizontal in its mouth and then when it wants to bite they release swing forwards and down and it can inject the Venom with them but to put it into context every year thirty thousand people die from snake bite in sub-Saharan Africa in the UK four people have died from adebite in the last 100 years so the risk is very low most people who get bitten by an Adder get bitten from one of two reasons either they're in a place like this where there are adders they don't realize they're there and they put their hand down on a toxic of grass or something that's got an adder in it and the adder reacts by biting them or they will find an Adder when it's cold in the mornings when the adders are sluggish and don't move very quickly and believe that the adder is either dead or injured and pick it up there was a case not so long ago of a man who found an Adder on the road the road's concrete it's quite cold the Ada was cold and sluggish he picked the adder up and stuck it in his pocket and of course his body heat then warmed the adder up it became active he put his hand in his pocket and the Ada bit him so these are animals that are entirely safe to be around as long as you treat them with respect I've spent hundreds of hours in the company of others and I've never once been bitten you just need to be cautious and careful and sensible about how you approach [Music] say it's painful and compare it to something like a bee sting but if you're unlucky enough to be allergic to the Venom then an adebite can be very serious indeed so as a safety measure if you're bitten by an addict you should always seek immediate medical support so I found my first Adder she's down at the base of these brambles and bushes here sheltered out of the wind but getting the sun she's a snake that I call Boudicca because she's a strong and independent and very powerful female and she undoubtedly rules the roost around here this is Boudicca even though it's cold enough for me to see my breath she's found some dry grass to lie on in a spot which the sun is just starting to hit unless she's Disturbed she'll spend several hours here basking but I can see that her eye is a pale blue color rather than the normal red she's about to shed her skin Addis shed their skins up to four times a year and to do so they stretch their old skin to loosen it then catch their nose on something like a thorn or a sharp Rock and slide right out of it like someone pulling a stocking off a leg if you ever find another skin it's inside out compared to the way it was when the adder was wearing it but as part of their skin and adder's eyes are covered by a transparent scale when you're about to shed they pump fluid beneath this to literally lift the scales from their eyes during this period adders are almost blind and may be unusually aggressive so when I'm looking for adders this is the sort of thing that I'm looking for a sign of grass tussock landscape or often they're found in stanza Bracken as well but what you're looking for are places where they are sheltered from the wind but the sun can still reach them the sun's just knit behind the cloud at the moment but it'll be out in a second but in places like this the grass tussocks shelter the adder from the prevailing winds but they can still get the sun on their bodies and start to warm up so your best time and chance of seeing adders is usually in the morning when the day is just starting to warm up when the sun is just starting to hit the ground in places like this and then you can come and have a look for them I tend to stick my back to the Sun and then try and see where the Sun is going but the wind can't get to and more often than not that's where I'll find out is Basking buddhica has now been joined by a male Adder others are sexually dimorphic which means that males and females appear very different females are much larger and usually a chocolate brown color with dark brown diamonds down their backs males are much smaller and an olive green or silvery white color with black diamonds this male will not stray far from Boudicca now he's waiting for her to come into heat at which point he will fight any other male that comes near her for the right to mate I was privileged to see this the previous summer here the Silvery gray male is writhing on top of a female he's trying to persuade her to mate with him but she seems unreceptive and unimpressed by his moves but she is broadcasting pheromones that other mail adders can detect from hundreds of meters away they announce her Readiness to mate and it's not long before a second male appears to challenge the first for the right to mate with her shortly afterwards both mail adders disappeared into the grass racing alongside each other to see who was fittest if a race doesn't decide it the adders will rise up and try and push each other down in the famed Dance of the adders adders are vulnerable to their own Venom so competing males will never bite each other to do so would end the adder as a species on this occasion though the race was all that was needed and the first male reappeared shortly afterwards his rival vanquished as at this time of year are basking in the case of the males to ripen and create their sperm and in the case of the females to create the eggs now adders are an unusual species in that once they're mated the female will retain the eggs inside her until they hatch and then she'll give birth to live young later on in the year July August somewhere around there the young emerged fully formed and they even have venom so they're capable of hunting right from the offset which is important because there's no such thing as parental care in the world of others this is a young Adder perhaps a year old it won't develop its very different male and female coloring for another year or so this young Adder has been almost bitten in two probably by a fox or a badger but young adders are resilient and this one will survive the injury so what I have down here now are two male adders and these two males are lying on top of each other literally quite literally circled on top of one another and that's not unusual at all for adders at this time of year they're quite Cooperative until they get the scent of a female who may be receptive nearby and at that point all bets are off and they will fight for dominance sadly Britain's adders are under significant threat and may well go extinct within the next 20 to 30 years there are three reasons for this firstly following lockdown many more people are getting out to the countryside and previously quiet habitat as being disturbed by dog walkers and mountain bikers secondly populations like this one are becoming isolated hemmed in by busy roads like the one you can hear in the background and by human infrastructure isolated populations become inbred and their diminished gene pool means that a disease which affects one will affect all the third reason surprisingly is climate change you would think that a cold-blooded reptile would welcome a warming world but is warming in the winter adders particularly the males I'll leave in bromation too early before their prey species are available and living off their fat reserves instead weakening themselves before the all-important mating season so here's a mystery I've not personally been able to solve which is that I've never seen adders in any site that doesn't have this stuff this is sphagnum moss it's found in damp areas and it absorbs far more its own weight in water and for some reason I've never found others in a place that doesn't have it and I often find adders basking on buns like this one which we've got sphagnum Moss on them now for a cold-blooded reptile to like a damp environment it seems a bit counterintuitive to me I don't know whether it's because that's where the prey items are or because it's whether it's because adders just like us like a comfy bed who knows if somebody knows let me know I found my second female of the day she's busking just on the side of this band behind me here um I guess she's probably about 18 inches long so not the largest female on the site but not a small one either and she will stay there probably for quite a long time because the wind is quite cold but she's nestled into the grass so that the wind isn't touching her but her coils are getting the benefit of the Sun and what you will sometimes see with others is that they will sit there for a while and bask and then they'll turn around a bit like um ice cream being poured into a cone from one of those ice cream machines and they'll turn themselves around so that the parts of the coils of the snake that were in the sun don't move into the shade and the other parts get a chance to warm up so the female here knows perfectly well that I'm here snakes can feel vibration in the ground through their bodies so she will have felt our footsteps coming from quite some time some distance away which is why we're not going to go any closer at the moment so we don't disturb her but the sun has just gone in and it's getting quite cold again and I think she's probably going to go in herself in a minute and if she does that I'll see if I can get some video a bit closer to her because it won't be me disturbing her look at the size of these grass tussocks and see just how easily the adder disappears into one so I've had a fantastic day today I've seen a total of nine adders which for an area like this is not bad going at all this is Steve dealy for wild walks at an undisclosed location in gloucestershire thanks for watching bye for now foreign [Music]

Channel: Wildwalks with Steve Deeley

Views: 71,351

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Id: wdv_y6Kelmg

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 20 2023