Zoologist Reacts To Common Snake Myths and Misconceptions

[Music] well hi there my name is clint laidlaw i double majored in zoology and biological science i have a master's and a phd in biology and i also own and operate an educational reptile outreach called clint's reptile room in springville utah which is where we are right now and i can tell you as i talk to the public about reptiles i sure do hear some crazy misconceptions about them especially snakes last year when i was looking for animal halloween decorations for our reaction video about those i was told with great confidence that they don't make snake skeletons because snakes don't have any bones and that one just totally floored me what other crazy snake misconceptions are out there that are just waiting to shock me like that one did so i asked you guys in our clinch reptiles facebook group what snake misconceptions you guys hear let's find out what you had for me all right mr jason what is the first snake misconception do you know that snakes lay by you to measure when they will be able to eat you that was one of those that just blew me away when i first started hearing it there there were like memes or stories photos that would come up on social media talking about someone who had the you know a pet boa or something like that and they'd sleep with it in their bed and it would come and it would cuddle up to them and they thought this was really cute and then they talked to their vet and their vet's like oh you've got to stop doing that that snake you got to get rid of that snake that snake is measuring you to try to figure out at what point it will be able to eat you and there are a lot of people that believe this and it's really dumb uh it it's not dumb if you don't know anything about snakes but for starters there's only one species of snake on the planet that's ever been verified to have actually eaten a person that doesn't mean that there aren't a few snake species that get big enough to eat things the size of humans uh it's very difficult for a snake to eat a human because of the shape we have we actually have a whole video on this but uh in general there's just a small handful of snakes and they're usually not the ones that people are talking about that are actually even capable of ever eating a person but on top of that snakes don't put this kind of forethought into their meals right they're not they're not farming humans or or any other sort of prey item and trying to decide at which point it's time to harvest snakes are opportunistic feeders all of them big enough to actually eat a person are ambush predators which means they just sit in an area and let something walk by and then you have a couple of seconds at most to make a decision to eat it well to at least grab it and attempt to constrict it or not the end that's that's the whole time they're going to spend planning that out it's a very very quick decision that they have to make i mean sometimes it might be a matter of a bird flying by you and are you going to grab it as it goes by or are you not so snakes make this decision very very quickly they certainly don't spend months and years thinking about it and trying to figure out exactly when they will be the right size um you know there are times where a snake will bite off more than it can swallow you know sometimes they can overpower such a meal but they can't quite get it down they usually try and they find out during the effort of attempting to eat it that they just can't make it work but that's it that's it no snake has ever laid by somebody trying to figure out if they need to wait a few more years before they'll be able to eat you that's never happened and it requires frankly a level of intelligence and planning that snakes don't have nor is there any reason for them to have it because they've only got two seconds to decide on prey and then it's gone the next one is that snakes are slimy snakes are slimy that is one that i hear rather a lot uh it's a very very common misconception generally speaking snakes don't produce anything even remotely like slime i did some research recently and it seems that there are a few really rare snake lineages you've never heard of that can excrete some sorts of things onto their scales but generally speaking snakes don't have any glands like that in their scales at all they're very very dry unless of course you pulled one out of the water like like a water snake or an anaconda or something like that but generally speaking snakes are totally dry now mammals like us we do have the ability to to produce some kind of slime out of the glands in our skin so if you feel a snake i mean they're very smooth and so that can almost make them feel slippery like they're slimy but if you actually feel slime you probably either pulled them out of some slime or it's you the next one is snakes chase people or they just want to bite people ah yeah uh i've definitely heard that one a lot generally speaking snakes are not going to chase you in general snakes are not nearly as fast as you are the very few snake species out there maybe just one snake species that is actually large enough to eat a person so the only one that would really really associate something like a human with food is a a very slow ambush predator this would be the reticulated python so they're not going to have any ability to run down a person they're not even going to try they can they just sit they wait and they grab things as they go by that would be the only snake that's really going to come after you for any other reason other than they feel threatened by you they feel like you're going to kill them and like if you look in north america we don't have a single snake in north america that wins a fight with a person something like a rattlesnake you know they could bite you and if you didn't get any medical treatment you could end up dying tomorrow as a result of that interaction but that doesn't help the rattlesnake that you kill today feel much better about the fact that it got killed today every snake in north america loses a fight with a person always and so the snakes that we have here in north america and in most parts of the world they're not viewing you as a potential food source so the only reason they would ever bite you is because they are threatened that you're going to try to kill them in general though biting is an absolute last ditch measure it's the last thing they want to do you you don't pick a fight with a giant just because it walks by you it's not until you're out of other options that you try fighting back because again you're going to lose that fight some snakes though and some other animals that are prey species do something called predator approach and and predator approach can be a very very successful way to avoid being eaten it works particularly well well just in general it works against predators pretty well because a lot of predators are adapted to a very specific hunting style in many cases that hunting style involves having the element of surprise and the thing is they're just not capable of finding a different way to approach prey when that is lost and so in a lot of cases if you're a prey species what has historically been the most successful thing is if you notice for example a lion you just walk right at it and you're like i know where you are you're right there i'm coming at you and a lot of times you know the lion will be like oh gosh what what do i do now i you know like they have no way to deal with this situation this isn't how i hunt uh and they just kind of take off out of there whereas if you continue to act like you don't see the lion well then the lion continues its normal approach to hunting you and you might end up eaten so some snakes may do some level of predator approach i've definitely had defensive snakes strike come towards me strike come towards me strike come towards me if i turn off and just walk away you know that's over but as long as i'm there posing a threat to them some snakes will come at you a little bit generally speaking though snakes want nothing to do with you and they want to avoid that fight at all costs so all snakes lay eggs right well i've definitely heard that on many occasions more than i hear all snakes lay eggs i hear people who are very very surprised when i tell them about snakes like boas rattlesnakes garter snakes that are live bearers and actually a very very large percentage of all snakes are live-bearing something in the neighborhood of like 40 of all snakes are live-bearing we looked it up into something like 20 to 30 percent of snakes that give live birth so a little lower than i was thinking but still a pretty high percentage and especially as you go up in altitude or latitude you start to get fewer and fewer egg-laying snakes as it becomes increasingly difficult to find suitable places to incubate eggs other than retaining them and then you can keep them warm by keeping your own body warm moving around too warm places for example as you get up into alaska the only snakes are gardener snakes which are a life-bearing snake and so a large percentage of snakes do not lay eggs there are in fact this is something super cool i just learned about recently so for example almost all of the boas give live birth but there are a few that don't and and some of those that don't they lay eggs but they have like a super long gestation period before they lay the eggs and they lay the eggs and they they don't have like a normal shell on them and you can kind of see what's going on in there and there's a very very well developed snake at the moment they're laid so they almost do what is called ovo viva parity which is where they keep the eggs inside until they're ready to hatch but they end up laying them just a few days or weeks before it's time for them to hatch out so they lay eggs but they it's sort of like a halfway in between sort of thing aren't snakes poisonous aren't snakes poisonous that is a very common one usually when somebody asks me you know i'll for example have a snake like this this is a ball python which is not a dangerous snake in any way but people will often ask me is that snake poisonous and and i usually respond by saying most people can't name a poisonous snake and they go what and they go i can and they start naming snakes you know rattlesnakes and king cobras and copperheads and who knows what else they'll also name things that are totally not dangerous you know like boas and anacondas and things like that but they name all these snakes and when i tell them that's not poisonous they're shocked they are shocked and the reality is many of the snakes they list like rattlesnakes and king cobras are highly venomous but venomous and poisonous while they're both types of of toxicity they're different so these are both toxins but venoms specifically need to be injected into the bloodstream uh in the case of snakes they use fangs in order to do this or or at least very large grooved teeth which you could argue are things and then and the actual venom needs to be introduced via a wound for example my my friends uh chandler and tyler not long ago i think they drink rattlesnake venom and and king cobra venom because you can you can drink it your stomach will neutralize the proteins that are in there they'll denature those proteins unless you have a stomach ulcer in which case it can get into your bloodstream it's the worst way ever to find out you have a stomach ulcer but generally speaking almost all of the snakes that are dangerous are venomous but not poisonous well then snakes are not poisonous things are not poisonous that's one that i hear more often from people who are snake people okay so people who are not snake people ask me all the time that snake poisonous snake people have learned ah no they're venomous not poisonous and a small minority of snake people know that there are some poisonous snakes out there this is why i usually tell people they can't name a poisonous snake because there are some most people just never heard of them they are the keel back snakes in the genus rhabdophis from asia these kill back snakes are poisonous because they eat poisonous generally salamanders so poisonous amphibians that are a big part of their diet and they have special glands that sequester those poisons i will mention that the keelbacks are also venomous they're they they look like garter snakes but they have a medically significant venom to them as well but they sequester the poison from these salamanders and special glands and become themselves poisonous so that if they are consumed well that's toxic as well so it's not just a bite from a kill back snake but also eating a kill back snake that can lead you to have some serious problems or even die this snake here is a plane's hog-nosed snake which a strong argument can be made that it is venomous it may also be a poisonous snake though the research to determine for sure if this is the case to my knowledge hasn't been conducted just yet but these guys also eat poisonous amphibians toads and when threatened they're notorious for playing dead but it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense for them to play dead in the scenarios in which they do for one thing it's after a number of other defensive displays that they will do and so the animal just saw them alive and well moments earlier they tend to do this for animals like coyotes and skunks and opossums and raccoons animals that often will eat a dead snake if they find one but animals that have an excellent sense of smell and so when these snakes are threatened they'll roll over and show kind of a brightly colored belly and they will expose both their mouth and the inside of their vent and and they'll musk they'll let up you know kind of defecate and just let off what is a terrible smell but what is a smell that also probably advertises to all of these animals that have a great sense of smell that this animal is full of toad toxins and it would be better not to eat it so it is very likely that that is not them playing dead but them advertising that they too are a poisonous snake the only good snake is a dead snake and i've certainly heard that one a lot of times and i personally disagree with that very very much i suppose when it comes to what a good snake is or a good animal of any kind i mean that's a little bit subjective snakes certainly do a lot of rodent control you know if you're a farmer or something like that having a large number of snakes around can be highly beneficial because it's going to keep the rodent populations somewhat more in check they're not generally going to eat anything that uh you would eat unless you're eating the rodents yourself um and so so snakes tend to be very very beneficial at least for agriculture which is really important for human survival in general um and and overwhelmingly snakes don't do any harm that said they can they're they're capable of of doing harm to people uh you know if you look in in north america though for example you know almost nobody is killed by snakes and the majority of people bitten by venomous snakes are bitten on the hands and face and usually while under the influence of alcohol so you can put together what's going on there the reality is i mean most people have never been walking around and been just bitten randomly by any sort of a snake let alone a truly dangerous snake if you are bitten by a truly dangerous snake you will need to go seek medical attention and then you'll be okay and you'll have a cool story to tell it is it is best to respect venomous snakes uh to avoid interactions with them where possible trying to kill one is one of the best ways to get yourself bitten by one but if you just leave them alone snakes are much more than happy to leave you alone well in order to eat snakes unhinge their jaws that's a really really common one um probably all the vast majority of people i think are under the impression that snakes unhinge their jaws and we actually have a video that i referenced earlier about why snakes don't eat people and it also walks through how snake jaws actually function and uh i would argue that it's cooler than that because the reality is if you needed to swallow the thanksgiving turkey all in one bite unhinging your jaw couldn't solve your problem right your problem is at the front of your mouth that your mouth can't open wide enough it's not at the back that will become a problem later but that's down the road your first problem is the front of your mouth doesn't open wide enough and snakes are able to do this because their jaw their front two jaw bones don't fuse with one another so they don't have a chin like we do they're just connected by very stretchy ligaments and so if you imagine that this is the bottom jaw of snake i'm the top jaw their jaws instead of opening like this they open like that and they've got more stretchiness over here and here they've got what's called a kinetic skull so the whole skull is very flexible not just the bottom jaw actually the top jaw even the rows of teeth are not connected so the jaw bones up there are not connected to the main part of the skull and so both the top and bottom jaw are capable of walking forward one side at a time and stretching open like this on the bottom jaw and so that allows the jaw to open very wide and then they walk prey in one side at a time and both top and bottom jaw are working in tandem to pull them in sort of like a treadmill very very cool much cooler in my opinion than just unhinging your jaw something they can't do your corn snake is going to eat my dog or my cat or my baby i've heard that uh a lot of people there you know that they they even say even people who are interested in getting a snake they're like well i would get a snake i want to get a corn snake but i'm afraid it'll eat my cat the reality is there are pet snakes out there big enough to eat a cat but more importantly cats are big enough to eat almost any pet snake you would get a snake has to be really big before it's capable of eating something the size of a cat i mean we're talking you know a snake up around 10 feet before it's really going to be taking on things like cats so if you're thinking about getting a giant snake and you're planning on having it hang out unsupervised with your cat then yeah probably don't get a pet snake i would also not recommend at any point having your pet snake and your cat together unsupervised or even supervised mostly because the cat is such a big danger to the snake but a corn snake will never be big enough to be anything but a meal for a cat all snakes are venomous or or dangerous i i this one surprises people a lot i think when they find out that the majority of snakes are not at least what you consider to be venomous in a medically significant way there's an argument that can be made that a huge group of the lizards which includes the snakes they're all venomous depends on how how liberal you're being with the term venom but when it comes to something that they could inject that's actually going to have like serious consequences for you a very small fraction of snakes especially in north america in north america we're talking about coral snakes copperheads water moccasins cottonmouths and rattlesnakes and that's it that's it uh you know other parts of the world are gonna have a lot of other venomous snakes in general wherever you are when you come across a snake if you don't know what it is leave it alone but the reality is in most places the vast majority of the snakes that you're going to see are non-venomous not dangerous i've i've lived here in utah for more than 11 years now i've seen venomous snakes in a lot of other states i'm yet to run into one in this state and i have found a lot of snakes not one has had a medically significant venom because the only one we have here are rattlesnakes i'm hoping to find one this summer snakes are boring they have no personality i've definitely heard that a lot of people are under the impression that reptiles in general are just sort of like mindless robots that don't have personality and it is interesting you know just if you encounter two snakes even of the same species how differently they can behave from one another you know i've just just looking at ball pythons for example i mean i have some that move around a lot some that hold still almost all the time i have got some a very small number that are very very grumpy and there seems to be like a genetic component to that some lines of ball pythons seem to be very grumpy the overwhelming majority are very very laid back but they're definitely different personalities and even within an individual snake the type of interactions that you have with them can dramatically change things for example you know about uh six to eight months ago we got a yellow anaconda here at the the reptile room and when we got her she was very afraid of people and she would strike at people who were out across the room she'd strike back at your face while you were holding her you know and this is gonna be the biggest snake we have so that was that's pretty intense when you know that someday that snake will be big enough actually to kill a person we've put some work in to her mostly just communicating to her that yeah we handle you but we're never going to hurt you and she's completely different you can hand her to children now she's great she's great so that personality you know the way that they respond to people in particular can change dramatically based on the way that people interact with them when a snake has vertical pupils it means they're venomous that's that's definitely something i've heard a lot of times so people say that round pupils mean non-venomous vertical pupils mean venomous now i can tell you if you come across a snake that you suspect of being venomous you probably don't want to like get in its face and take a look at what its pupils look like even if this were true it would be a quite worthless piece of trivia uh it would be i mean if anything it would get you killed but vertical pupils and circular pupils do tell you something about a snake what they don't tell you is whether or not it's venomous this snake for example is the most venomous snake ion this is my false water cobra his name is shelby and though he is not a true cobra he is venomous and his pupils are round that's also true of true cobras and coral snakes and a whole heck of a lot of venomous snakes now now you know at the same time the ball python i had out earlier completely non-venomous snake it has vertical cat-like pupils and what those pupils actually tell you more than anything is when is that snake most active vertical cat style pupils can open a lot wider they dilate much wider than do round pupils and so nocturnal animals especially you know nocturnal snakes tend to have these vertical slit cat type eyes meanwhile diurnal snakes tend to have circular pupils and so that's really what you can learn from taking a look at those pupils i wouldn't recommend doing that though if you suspect the snake is highly venomous unless you're using like binoculars or a telephoto lens on a camera definitely don't go those those are vertical aren't they that's not how you want to learn like take a moment just say thank you for being here as we clear up some of these misconceptions and and one thing though that i want to share with you that isn't a misconception is that it is rad or stinking rad to be one of our patreon supporters because we have some really really awesome features for our patrons these include extra videos and podcasts and getting to see all the videos early having your names in the credits there's just so many cool things and you help us make awesome content like this so if you're interested in seeing those features or just supporting this channel please consider checking out our patreon the rule of thumb of red touches black you're okay jack ah red touches black you're okay jack red touches yellow you're a dead fellow something like that definitely something i learned as a kid uh you know and it's something that has some utility but not enough because that one works except for when it doesn't the reason you even care so this is this is referring to tri-colored snakes that are usually some you know red yellow black or red white and black in in coloration and they're both highly venomous tri-colored snakes the coral snakes and then there are a lot of mimics king snakes milk snakes and a number of others we actually have a whole video on this but they are mimics that get a survival advantage by looking a lot like coral snakes and a lot of people will tell you that you can tell the difference by looking at the banding pattern and in north america that rhyme works usually there are some coral snakes that just have an aberrant pattern there are some that are like albino coral snakes that don't have any black at all so they've got white where there would have been black and you know and some sometimes the pattern gets mixed up and so in general if you see a tri-colored snake and you don't know exactly what it is just leave it alone as though or a venomous snake but if uh you're somewhere like south america where we just visited ourselves looking for snakes including coral snakes you might have noticed that many of the snakes down there are red yellow and black or red white and black but red touches black and highly highly venomous coral snakes and you can easily easily make a mistake so the the real poem is if you don't know what it is leave it alone it's a good rhyme [Laughter] snakes free roam or cohabitate with lots of other snakes definitely seen that just you know recently it's something i saw in uh one of my favorite movies we bought a zoo or they sent just a crate full of all kinds of snakes uh some of them being snake eating snakes uh and and a lot of people just you know if they find out you've got 10 snakes they're like oh they just figure you've got like an enclosure with 10 snakes hanging out in it and the reality is that's just not a good idea for a whole lot of reasons one of them being the potential for not what i would call cannibalism because cannibalism usually is eating your own species though some sometimes that can happen but you know many snakes eat other snakes snakes are the perfect shape for a snake to eat we were talking earlier about how snakes eat well the easiest thing for a snake to eat is another snake and on top of that they can carry a lot of diseases even even things like their gut fauna like the e coli in their gut that can work really well for you but not so well for a different species you do just fine with human e coli in your gut but not so well if you get cow e coli in your gut kind of works the same way for them cohabitating keeping a whole bunch of different snakes together there are very few ways that goes well and lots of ways it can go wrong what about in a temple like that first temple though i would keep mostly legless lizards as long as as long as the majority are legless lizards that should work for millennia yeah that makes sense yeah good do snakes even poop that was a new one to me that one that one came from uh our facebook question and yeah snakes totally poop they they they do um snakes have a very long body and a very short tail and tails by definition come after the end of the digestive tract so so the the definition of the vertebrate tail is a muscular post anal tail and so this snake you can see it transitions from single belly scoots to split scoots at the end of the the digestive system so right at the beginning of the tail and so the tail is very very short on snakes and out of that vent they poop they poop and they pee and they do everything else it's a it's a multi-purpose hole everything but the eating and the breathing pretty much everything that passes out passes through that particular opening and snakes generally uh produce a more solid waste not only their when they defecate but also when they urinate they produce what's called uric acid uh this is like a white paste the same thing that birds produce it's more water efficient than other forms of uh of nitrogenous wastes like like urea or ammonia and so uh pretty fancy now i i do know that snakes don't have legs snakes don't have legs unless they do um this snake is is part of a big clade of snakes called the colubroides and that that is about 80 percent of all your snakes and they are legless but the vast majority of all snake lineages have legs uh they've got a what's called a vestigial pelvic girdle so they've got remnants of the pelvis they've got two back legs that usually each have one claw on it they're frequently referred to as spurs and this is the overwhelming majority of lineages so most snake lineages have legs the biggest single lineage which constitutes the majority of snake species don't and so snakes often don't have legs but in many cases they do now snakes don't have ears snakes don't have ears that you can see um this is this is something that people who know quite a bit about snakes know to look for on them it's one of the ways that you can differentiate a snake from most legless lizards is that they have no external ear openings but they do have ears they're just covered over so sort of like if you cover your ears and you can still hear so snakes do hear they just uh well we can't see how now i the one thing i do know about snakes is that they work for the devil snakes work for the devil that's an interesting one you know a lot of people when when they they see a snake they assume that they're out to get they're out to get you you know a lot of times if i'm holding a snake like this people will ask me with great confusion why isn't it attacking you why isn't it trying to bite you and and i usually just respond by asking well why would it fight me you know there are only two real reasons it either thinks it's getting food or it thinks i'm trying to kill it um this thing knows it can't eat me it already measured me right and so it knows it can't eat me but it also has learned that i'm not going to hurt it and so there's absolutely no reason for it to pick a fight with me but a lot of people are very much under the impression that they're just evil and and some of this probably comes back to the the references to satan as as being in the form of a snake in the garden of eden uh something i think is really interesting you know just if you look at like the bible you know assuming that that's often the source of of this this misconception that snakes work for the the the devil is that in addition to satan taking the form of a snake uh when moses raises up the the snake the the flaming fiery serpent you know he's doing so in representation of christ so you know you pick which one you want to be i seems to me snakes might be neutral and you can use them as a a representation of good or evil the reality is snakes are just snakes they're just trying to survive and and eat and something i have found truly incredible about snakes is even even a wild snake that's terribly afraid of you you can communicate very very quickly with that snake that you are not a threat and they will calm down and you know in many cases i can take a wild snake that two minutes ago thought i was trying to kill it and was fighting for its life and now it is peacefully sitting on the shoulders of my son i'm not sure i could be won over that quickly if if something came and snatched me up out of my house and uh you know that it could communicate to me what its intentions were and that everything was okay and i would just be okay with that snakes i find to be very very delightful animals and it's incredible when somebody comes here and holds a snake you know it just takes one and they never view snakes in the same way again and uh so hopefully this has helped to clear up a few of the common misconceptions about snakes if you have more misconceptions you'd like for us to take on in the future please comment those down in the comments and as always like and subscribe and we'll see you real soon oh by the way snakes have skeletons i'm just imagining the fact that my bobble head is gonna be in this video constantly talking how i feel about that [Music] you

Channel: Clint's Reptiles

Views: 342,426

Keywords: Reptiles, Snakes, Lizards, Animals, Snake, Phylogeny, Boa, Python, Viper, Cobra, Elapid, Colubrid, Hognose snake, King cobra, Gaboon Viper, Rattlesnake, Anaconda, Burmese Python, Reticulated python, Which Raptor is Actually in Jurassic Park, Velociraptor, Bullsnake, Ball Python, corn snake, milk snake, sand boa, emerald tree boa, garter snake, boa constrictor, dragon snake, rainbow boa, carpet python, false water cobra, rosy boa, blood python, king snake, Snake Discovery, Chandler, reptile

Id: f0vWEtnnrVQ

Length: 35min 11sec (2111 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 20 2022