Trying to suck the venom
out of a snake bite, it doesn't matter what
kind of snake it is, it is absolutely useless. I'm Dr. Sara Ruane, and
I'm the assistant curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Today, we are going to look
at snake attacks in movies and judge how real they are. What the? I think a snake could end up in someone's luggage accidentally
and then it gets out, or it could be just stowaway
somewhere in the plane itself. Snakes are pretty good at
getting into really small places, and they are really secretive,
so they could be there for a long time and you
just wouldn't even know it. There are so many species
of snakes in this scene. They are a mixture of harmless snakes that aren't going to cause
any problems for anybody. So, those are milk snakes
falling out of the ceiling, maybe a corn snake, some of the most common pet
snakes that people keep. Even if a snake isn't venomous, one of the ways it'll defend
itself when it is cornered is by striking and biting. Snakes actually have
pretty weak jaw musculature with respect to chomping down because they don't chew their food, they swallow everything whole. If the snake doesn't have
fangs, if it's not venomous and all it has are these tiny little teeth and it was to bite down on you, it's really not that big of a deal. Yes, sir, I'm soaking the leis with it. The pheromone will make
these guys go f---ing crazy. The use of pheromones to make these snakes act so wild is not realistic. Pheromones in snakes are
very poorly understood, but pheromone work has
been done across squamates, which is the group that
contains snakes and lizards, and so some work on geckos has shown that they absolutely do use
pheromones to communicate. Typically, pheromones are
going to have a lot to do with mates, finding mates, mate selection, maybe even combat between
males versus males or females versus females
over potential mates. But as far as being aggressive
towards other species, that is really unlikely. I'm going to give "Snakes on a Plane" a four for realism. I like that there are
actually some real snakes used in the movie, but the
behavior of these snakes is a really bad look for
snakes and totally inaccurate. A human can outrun pretty
much every snake that exists. Flat out, an anaconda certainly
can't chase down a person. This anaconda has a lot
of upper-body strength that a real anaconda would
not be able to muster up, particularly out of the water. Anacondas are primarily aquatic, and they reach massive, massive girths, and one of the reasons
they're able to do that is because they live in the water and the water supports that body weight. So, the anaconda in this movie
seems gargantuan in size. It seems maybe that it's
somewhere in the 40-foot range. And although anacondas are
thought to be able to approach approximately 30 feet, the reality is that as far as legitimate documentation that has not been questioned, 20, 25 feet is a lot more realistic. If they are on the larger
side and you are by yourself and one was to wrap around you, you need a second person
there to get out of that. It wouldn't be undoable if
you have a second person who can start unwrapping the snake, but by yourself, you
actually are pretty limited in what you can do to get
out of that situation. Snakes typically that constrict are going to fully kill whatever
it is they're trying to eat before they start actually consuming it. By constricting their food first, then it takes away the ability
for the prey to do anything. In reality, that snake is
going to be taking its time when it's feeding, and
given the way snake skulls are put together, it's
not a simple process. People talk a lot about snakes unhinging their jaws when they feed, but the reality is that their jaws are not actually attached to start with. So, the upper skull is all one piece, but the lower jaws actually sit in a little groove on each side. The lower jaw of a
snake is the same thing, where it can stretch out very, very wide. And so this stretchy
ligament allows the snake not just to open its jaws
very wide horizontally. In this clip, when the snake is feeding, it seems to just be
gulping down the human, but in reality, in order
to pull that person down into their digestive
tract and down their throat, that snake is actually going
to be using one jaw at a time, and then once it really
gets down into the throat where there's a lot of musculature, it can start using those muscles in the same way that we swallow something. But it takes a while before that sort of natural
reflexive action takes over. So, I give "Anaconda" a four because the way that anaconda moves around and its speed is incredibly unrealistic. Anacondas are not out looking
to eat people, anyway. What we're seeing is a mixture of sort of heavy-bodied
snakes, boas and pythons, and then a bunch of legless lizards that aren't snakes at all. Snakes are just a kind of lizard, and so if we were to look at a family tree of snakes and lizards,
snakes are just within it. The snake sitting there like
that and looking defensive but not really doing
anything is pretty accurate. Snakes are doing almost
everything in their power to not bite. Venom is only used defensively as a secondary defensive system. Snakes primarily use venom to acquire prey and to kill it in a safe way. To avoid getting bit in
a situation like that, staying still is a good
strategy to start with. Staying calm, no herky-jerky motions. Anything that's going to
startle the snake is more likely to make it bite because
it's going to get scared. And then just trying to
back away very slowly and calmly would be the next step. So, that's a python, and
it's just hanging out. That seems pretty realistic. That's what most snakes do. Most snakes, even if you're
up close in their face, are going to remain pretty calm if they can avoid having to do anything. One of the best ways
snakes defend themselves is by not moving and hoping
you don't really see them. I'm going to give it a five. What I like about this
clip is that the snakes for the most part are
acting the way snakes do. These snakes are mostly just
minding their own business. Maybe they are striking a little bit when Indiana Jones is actually
kind of harassing them, but even the cobra doesn't do anything, and that's really quite realistic. I have to take some points off because most of the animals in this
clip aren't snakes at all. Can you hear me? Snakes really don't
hear the way that we do. If you have a pet snake, you're not going to teach
this snake its name, and it's going to look up at you and recognize that you're
even talking to it. That being said, snakes
can feel vibrations, particularly through their lower jawbones, so they can feel
something like a footfall. And there is certainly
evidence that snakes do hear super-super-low frequencies, but the human range is not something that snakes are picking up on. Flicking their tongues is how snakes are tasting
everything in their environment and bringing those odor
molecules back into their mouth and letting their brain process
what it is that's around. So even if they can't see it, they are able to sense
when something is there, whether that's something to
worry about, like a predator, or whether it's something
to be excited about, like maybe a potential mate, or whether it's something to eat. This snake is in a zoo environment. It's probably incredibly used to people, and it's probably very well fed. If I was to fall in there, I would just keep an eye on the snake and just calmly get myself
out, just climb on back out. They act the way I'd expect people to act. Jumping on furniture, trying
to get out of the way. If a snake wanted to do
something to a person though because it felt defensive or whether it thought it
was going to eat somebody, which is really unlikely, climbing up on something is
probably not an effective way to get away from it. But again, you could just
kind of walk away quickly. The snake's not likely to follow you. It portrays the snake
as very calm and docile, which is pretty realistic. The blinking, the hearing, that's not accurate whatsoever, but because they portray
the snake so nicely, I'm still going to give it a six. That snake in the clip looks
like it is very deliberately coming over, sinking its
front two fangs only into her with the express purpose of biting her. And that's a really weird
thing to try to portray because that's really not how snakes bite. They're going to engage both
their upper and lower jaws and bite fully. In the United States,
getting bit on the hand or on the ankle or leg tends to be where people get bit the most. Cutting a cross or an X or a
slash into a snakebite wound is something that you see
even in medical advice for snakebite kits when you
go back in time a little bit. But the reality is that doing that is only causing you more problems. What people think when they do that is they're going to make a nice incision so they can start trying
to suck that venom out and really get it all out there. Venom really needs to be injected into the circulatory system,
into the tissue directly for it to be effective. And so you could, assuming
you don't have any sores in your mouth or an ulcer
maybe, something that's allowing that venom to get into you,
you could eat snake venom and you would theoretically
be totally fine. And that's what makes venom
different from poison. Poison is something that you
ingest it, you have to eat it, and then it is able to
penetrate into your body through your stomach or through,
sublingually in your mouth. This character ultimately is
unable to get help in time to totally negate the effects of the venom and ends up having to lose her arm. If somebody gets bit by a
snake like a rattlesnake and is unable to get
treatment relatively quickly, it's not a death sentence. However, that hemotoxic venom
is going to start eating away at the tissue where the bite site is, and it's going to cause issues
such as gangrene, rotting, and ultimately, it may
result in an amputation even if you don't die from it. So this is realistic in that
this is what somebody might do if they saw somebody get bit by a snake, even if it's not the best treatment. So I'm going to give this a six. F---! So, that's not a boomslang whatsoever. This is a rat snake. This is not anything what a
boomslang even looks like. It's probably the most inaccurate
portrayal I've ever seen given how many close-ups
there are of a snake that's quite distinctive-looking. They don't have teeth up
in the front of their mouth that inject venom. Instead, they have these enlarged teeth in the back of their mouths. They do not have a sophisticated
venom-delivery system like a syringe, the
way a rattlesnake does. Boomslangs were not known
to necessarily be dangerous because they don't have these front fangs. 30 seconds before the
venom does its thing. You could get yourself a big
syringe of snake venom, 100%. Because the way that antivenom is made, you have to get venom
from the snake species you're targeting, and you
do that by taking the snake, and it's called milking it. And basically, under
controlled circumstances, the snake is encouraged or forced to bite, typically, it's kind of a rubber sheet that is stretched over
some sort of vial or cup, and the snake bites into it, and then the venom starts
dripping down into the cup. Oh. Typically, when you see
antivenom administered in a movie like "Bullet Train," it's really not how it
would go down in real life. Antivenom isn't just a, oh,
one dose and you're good. Typically, you are given
a certain number of doses based on the severity of the bite and the symptoms you're having, specifically for the species
or a group of species that that antivenom was made to work for. And you're monitored, and
if you keep getting worse, they'll give you a little bit more. It's also ridiculously expensive. It's not something you're
just carrying around. Having a dose of antivenom and then getting bit
relatively soon afterwards, it might actually protect
you from a subsequent bite. One thing I'll point out is that antivenom is very
good at stopping the venom that's circulating in somebody's body, but whatever damage has happened
typically isn't reversed. A boomslang is not a constrictor, and it's not necessarily
going to wrap around something and really hold on tight. A rat snake, the snake
that this looks like, can do something like that, but the snake's not going
to hang on for dear life given the opportunity to get away. I'm going to give this a one. I think this is one of the
most unrealistic scenes I've ever seen. The snake isn't a boomslang. The behavior of the snake is
not anything like a boomslang. The antivenom and how
they portray it working is totally unrealistic. A snake definitely would be able to sort of lunge forward and
bite someone in the face. Mambas are really big, or
they can be really big. They move pretty fast. They do spend some time climbing around, and so they do have pretty good ability to come right at someone's
face from that angle. That would not be impossible. It is possible that the snake
would feel pretty worried and defensive being surprised by a human, which, from the snake's perspective, is probably going to try to kill it because that's usually what
people try to do to snakes. Most snakes posture and only bite when they're
really pushed towards it, but it's certainly not impossible. Budd, I'd like to introduce
my friend, the black mamba. Black mamba. Somebody probably wouldn't
so instantaneously be feeling that bad. I mean, they'd feel it, but it
wouldn't necessarily be just fall-on-the-floor-instantaneously bad from a mamba bite. Venomous snakes come in two main flavors. You can have a snake that's neurotoxic with respect to its venom or hemotoxic. And black mambas fall into the general category of neurotoxic. Neurotoxic venom is going
to cause your nervous system to start shutting down, and this occurs because
the venom molecules sort of glom on to our
sodium potassium channels and make it so that they
don't pump efficiently, and that's what causes you to
have things like paralysis, your diaphragm stops
being able to function, and so you can essentially have no ability to breathe anymore. This is not a bad clip
with respect to realism. I'm going to give this a seven. With snakes like rattlesnakes, I'm always going to be
very, very, very cautious with how they're handled, and I'm never going to just
pick up a rattlesnake like that. No herpetologist who
doesn't want to end up in the hospital would ever do that. When snakes bite, they typically
strike, they make contact, and they let go pretty quickly. The only times where you see
a snake hanging on like that is, snakes have these recurved teeth, and so because they curve backwards, if they manage to kind of sink
their teeth into something, sometimes they can get a little bit stuck. You do in fact have to
kind of push them forward and unhook them because
of those recurved teeth. That's not a thing that's going to work. You could just do nothing,
and it would be as effective. Trying to suck the venom
out of a snakebite, it doesn't matter what
kind of snake it is, it is absolutely useless. It just starts acting so fast and dissipating through the
tissues, through the blood that there's no time to
start trying to suck it out. And it's not something
that is, like, in a capsule where you can just get it
all out in one big suck. Pouring alcohol on it is, I can't imagine it really matters, and it's certainly not going to suddenly make the person sit up and be OK. As far as portraying what
a rattlesnake looks like, it looks like a legitimate rattlesnake. As far as the behavior, as far as the way they're
dealing with the bite, totally ineffective. I'm going to give this a five. This is the worst one. For accuracy. There's no kind of snakes,
including cottonmouths, that are going to congregate together to hang out on somebody just to bite them. If in fact that kid, say,
tried to pick up a snake or fell on a snake and
did end up getting bit, no other snakes would show up to check it out or get involved. That would never happen. And the snake that was
responsible for the bite, the second it was no
longer feeling threatened or was being harassed, it would take off and get out of there. Mud: What time is it? Neckbone: 4:18! Mud: Yell it out every 10 minutes. Using that Sharpie and
getting the time is tracking how the venom is progressing
through the kid's system and seeing how the
swelling is progressing, and that can be something useful. Typically, you see that
more in snakebite treatment once the person's already at a hospital so that they can see if the effects of the venom are being slowed down and that it has been essentially
stopped by treatment, typically by antivenom. But that's not a bad thing to do. The progress of the snake venom and the swelling progressing
through the kid's leg, that seems pretty legitimate. You're going to have swelling. Your cells are going to start doing all sorts of crazy things. Lysing, popping open, hemorrhaging. I'm going to give this a nine. The snakes themselves are not portrayed particularly accurately in their behavior, but saying, "Let's get
this person to the clinic" and then just going to some
actual trained medical staff is absolutely the right answer. And so for that reason
alone, this gets my, probably the highest rating I could give. My favorite scene
watching these clips today is "Indiana Jones." This is a movie I've seen before, but it's only now in
retrospect watching it, seeing that all of the
"snakes" in the movie for the most part are
actually just legless lizards, I found it pretty charming. It's fun trying to identify
actual real animals, versus something like "Bullet Train," where it's totally inaccurate. Thanks for watching. If
you liked this video, why not slither on over to the next one?
