Crotalology (RATTLESNAKES) with Emily Taylor

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We have to say that.

Oh, hey, it's a 13-year-old poodle in a baby bjorn.

Allie Ward, congratulations, you're here.

Let's bust some flim flam with the world's biggest fan and advocate for rattlesnakes.

They grew up moving around the country in a Navy family and they've seen so many types of ecology, but they got their PhD from Arizona State University.

They're now a professor in the biological biological sciences at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, the director of the Physical Ecology of Reptiles Lab.

They run the Central Coast Snake Services, which helps relocate rattlesnakes so people don't kill them.

Also, an author of so many papers on rattlesnakes and the books California Snakes and How to Find Them and California Lizards and How to Find Them.

They're a co-founder of this year's inaugural Snake Week from July 13th through 19th.

And you can find out more at snakeweek.org.

They have a bunch of events and webinars.

They also head up Project Rattle Cam, which brings you live feeds of rattlesnakes in their natural habitat.

It's a joy.

I suggest you go check out Project Rattlecam.

I had them on a list of mine for years, and I finally met up with them in a hotel while we were both in LA.

Walking into a hotel lobby to talk about rattlesnakes on a Tuesday.

Normal stuff.

I see a snake dress.

Hi, I'm Allie.

Emily, how are you?

Thank you.

I wasn't chill about it, but before I even got there, I had taken a quick survey that this rattlesnake expert uses to determine perception of the snakes.

And then I took one after.

So, if you feel like contributing your own data before and after, we'll link the survey in the show notes and on our website.

So, we got to the hotel, we sunk into a couch to talk about all things rattlesnake.

Now, their genus Crotalis means rattle in Greek, and the timber rattlesnake, I just found this out, they got a raw deal.

They're named Crotylus horridus, which means rattling, terrible, as if its taxonomy were a Yelp review.

But we'll be changing perceptions in a moment.

But first, thank you so much to the patrons for sending in their questions for this episode.

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and thanks for all the reviews which helped the show so much.

I read them all.

And thank you this week to Peachy Keen4016 who wrote that when everything feels like just too much and the world seems like it's on fire, ologies is a hug from a friend and the safe space of a treehouse.

Peachy Keen4016, I hope you like rattlesnakes.

Well, you will in a bit, I promise.

Also, sorry everyone for the amount of times I gasp in this.

I couldn't control it.

So crawl out from under that cozy woodpile.

Tune your ears to the angelic rattle of one of the world's most maligned, misunderstood, gorgeous, mysterious, efficient creatures, and learn things such as the parenthood strategies of rattlers, how not to get bitten, what to do if you are bitten, the boggling statistics that will ease your mind, using snakes as props, their relationship with squirrels, anti-venom, vaccines, mattress trivia, mood snakes, and so, so much more with author, professor, advocate, herpetologist, and one of the world's foremost rattlesnake experts, and thus a crotologist, Dr.

Emily Taylor.

Emily Taylor, she, hers, and I'm a professor of biology at Cal Poly Slow.

Let's talk a little bit about what a rattler is

and

what people think it is.

So a lot of people see

a bull snake or other types of snakes and they think it's a rattler.

How do they differ from other snakes?

Really great question.

And you're absolutely right.

In fact, past week, I've gotten multiple texts to our snake hotline that we have

with, I have a rattlesnake in my yard, and it turns out it's a harmless gopher snake or a bull snake.

And that's because lots of snakes shake their tails and they do it when they're stressed out and it can make a like you know rattling noise in the leaf litter.

Really?

Yeah, and so that's actually evolutionarily ancient that snakes shake their little tails when they're stressed out.

But rattlesnakes basically evolved kind of a maraca on the end of it to make a big ruckus.

It's a defensive mechanism.

And so rattlesnakes are specifically two genera, cordless and sisteris, two types of vipers.

And they are different from all other snakes because they have a rattle on their tail, which is like modified keratin, so modified scales.

It's made like your fingernails and it makes that rattling noise saying, back the heck away.

Please go.

And are the rattles rattling against each other or are there little beans in there making the noise?

I'm going to explain it my best, but it is not filled with little things.

Okay.

It's actually insane.

Like what you're seeing from the outside is each segment is just a part of the actual segment on the inside.

And it's the most intricate thing you've ever seen.

Like forget, you know, seashell shape, like being intricate.

This is just incredible.

There's like a cross-section you can look at where you can see how they loosely hook into one another.

So when the snake shakes its tail shaker muscle, which is four times faster than hummingbird wings can be.

No.

Yeah.

They bang against each other and make that high-pitched noise.

Scientists who love rattlesnakes love them fiercely.

Yeah.

And so lots of people are studying the evolution of the rattle.

And briefly, there's a few hypotheses about why it evolved or how it evolved.

One was to warn off predators that might want to eat them.

One was to warn off kind of grazing bison that might be stepping on them.

And then one hypothesis is that ancient ancestors of rattlesnakes would use their little tails as a lure to bring in maybe small birds or other rodents that thought it was a worm.

No.

Yeah, and eventually this thing was co-opted for defense.

So we don't really know for sure, except that it's been pretty recent.

Rattlesnakes have evolved in the past 12 to 14 million years.

Oh, okay.

And how long have snakes been around?

A lot longer than that.

Many, many, many, many millions of years more than that.

But certainly the ancestors of rattlesnakes were shaking those little tails when they were stressed out for many millions of years before that.

Is it kind of like how squirrels shake their tails when they're threatened?

Well, it's funny they say that because squirrels in particular will shake their tails in a specific way when they see a rattlesnake.

What?

How?

Yeah, so actually when I'm out in the field, I can see a California ground squirrel from a distance and I can tell if it's shaking its tail at a snake.

No, what does it do?

So they have this really specific tail-flagging behavior where it will like waggle back and forth and then stop, waggle back and forth and then stop, kind of sticking up.

And are you ready to have your mind blown?

Because this is crazy.

They'll do it to both gopher snakes and rattlesnakes because both of them could eat the squirrel.

And they're basically saying to the gopher snake or rattlesnake, I see you.

Don't even bother hunting.

You're not going to sneak up on me.

Well, somebody had the brilliant idea of filming the squirrel shaking its tail using a heat-sensitive infrared camera.

And as people out there might know, rattlesnakes actually have heat-sensitive pits on their face so they can see this infrared radiation.

Gopher snakes don't.

The squirrels know this instinctively, and they shunt blood to their tails, and it lights up like a lightsaber in the rattlesnake's face.

Only when it's a rattlesnake.

When it's a gopher snake, they don't bother doing that.

The tail stays cold.

No.

It's incredible.

And so that heat definitely shows up for the pit viper.

Yes.

And it's saying, all right, all right, you see me.

I can't sneak up.

And they'll leave.

Usually they'll leave after that and go hunt somewhere else where they can have that element of surprise.

I know you are dying to know more about squirrels.

And don't worry, we have a whole episode called Scoridiology, and it is wall-to-wall squirrel facts.

And I'm glad it is in the world and in the show notes waiting for you.

So the pit vipers are, they're seeing this like hot little tail and they just move on.

Yeah, they'll basically pick up and move on and hunt somewhere else because they're ambush foragers.

They're waiting for some unsuspecting rodent to run by.

Surprise, surprise.

And if the squirrel already knows they're there, then they might as well not bother.

Plus, those squirrels can get in their face.

They throw dirt at them.

They kick them, and sometimes they even bite them.

Sometimes they even kill them.

Are you?

How?

Do they get the butt end of it?

No, you know what?

It's crazy.

An adult California ground squirrel can survive a rattlesnake bite.

How?

They're resistant to their venom through co-evolution.

Well, okay, resistant doesn't mean immune.

Yeah.

They sure do die and are eaten by rattlesnakes all the time, but most of the rattlesnakes are eating the babies who haven't developed a resistance yet.

Actually, it's through millions of years of co-evolution.

The squirrel that happened to have a slight resistance from a mutation, more likely to survive, had more babies, passed that on.

And then they're actually, the California ground squirrels are the reason the rattlesnake's venom is so toxic.

Because it was only then over this evolutionary arms race that the rattlesnake's venom, when mutation made it randomly more toxic, that that rattlesnake had more babies because it had more food and so on.

So it, you know, defense, offense.

Defense, offense.

And are ground squirrels the only one that have this kind of relationship?

Nope.

Wood rats have it too.

In fact, predators that eat rattlesnakes have it too.

So certain predators can survive rattlesnake bites.

Things like opossums, probably badgers.

Other predators are not resistant, things like hawks and owls, and they just tear off the spicy end of the snake before eating it.

I've seen a number of birds grab rattlesnakes and then versus grabbing a gopher snake.

When it's a gopher snake, they just pick it up and go.

When it's a rattlesnake, you see them kind of stamping around in the distance and what they're doing is they're ripping the head off.

I think they know.

They must.

Yeah.

And what about for the lay person

who

freaks out at a gopher snake or freaks out at any kind of

brush-colored patterned snake?

What are some of the hallmarks of a rattlesnake?

Let's sing their praises anatomically here.

Yes.

Well, the best way and the only way for sure to distinguish a rattlesnake from something else is the presence of a rattle.

Even baby rattlesnakes have a little button on their tail.

So rattlesnakes are never going to have a pointy tail ever.

If a snake has a pointy tail here in California, they're totally harmless.

You go back east, it depends.

And then, of course, internationally, all bets are off.

And then there's a whole bunch of other things that you can use to distinguish them, but they can be tricky because the gopher snakes are trying to convince you they're a rattlesnake.

They're like, I'm spicy, I'm dangerous.

Stay away from me.

So rattlesnakes have a more triangle-shaped head than a gopher snake, but a mad gopher snake is going to spread its head out.

No.

Yeah, and the craziest thing is that gopher snakes have actually evolved this special like flap of tissue in their throat that will buzz and make a hissing noise that sounds like a rattlesnake's rattle.

Oh my god.

Yeah, so this is why so many people think they have a rattlesnake in their yard, but it's actually just a gopher snake.

You know, the best way to do it is to learn using all of these different kinds of signals.

And there's Facebook groups called snake identification that people can post to and they can go on and they can learn and learning about the snakes around them.

It's fun too.

And let me tell you, as much as as I would love to describe all of the roughly 600 species of venomous snakes in the world, I only have about an hour here and one mouth.

So I'm going to give you some basic guidelines to ignore because they're not specific enough.

But in general, a pit viper will have a more triangular-shaped head.

Although, although the eastern rat snake in the U.S.

is harmless and it can expand its little noggin out in a triangle to resemble a pit viper if it's scared.

Also, there are snakes like the brightly banded yellow and black and red coral snake that is not a pit viper and it can look like a harmless corn snake, but it is not.

So you got to remember that if yellow touches red, you're dead.

The common adage is red on yellow kill that fellow.

Red on black is venom black, but that seems complicated and a little murdery and maybe sexist.

But also there are venomous non-rattlesnake pit vipers like this dull deep greenish dark brown cottonmouth snake and the copperhead snake which has hourglass shaped patterns.

If you are listening from Australia, you have a hundred of the world's 600 venomous snakes.

None of them are rattlesnakes.

So I hope you are enjoying this episode knowing that you likely won't encounter one in your garden, sadly.

Also, cobras, venomous but not triangular heads.

Those aren't pit vipers.

Some people say for venomous snakes, look for slit-shaped pupils and that that round pupils mean harmless.

But first off, that's not always true at all.

Coral snakes are venomous and they have round pupils, and many non-venomous snakes have slit ones.

Secondly, don't get so close to a snake and make eye contact if you're trying to figure out if it can kill you.

It's like trying to sniff a bison's neck to figure out if it can trample you.

Leave the critters be, whether they have rattles or fangs or hooves or whatever.

Imagine, imagine if you glanced over at the bus stop and you see someone wearing a jiu-jitsu outfit.

would you go pick a fight or try to kill them with a shovel just because they are chilling and they know self-defense?

I'm hoping not.

And now we've talked before about how you're essentially California gal, as am I.

What's the range of rattlesnakes?

Where do they live?

Are they on any other continents, any other states?

Rattlesnakes can be found through the Western Hemisphere, through southern Canada, through most states in the United States.

They used to be in all states except for Alaska and Hawaii, but they've been extirpated from some of the states in the Northeast, but they're present throughout most of the U.S.

and then they go down through Central America, throughout most of South America, and they end in like northern Argentina.

Extirpated means they are sadly no longer found in that area.

I got you.

And when

does your life intersect with a rattlesnake?

Did you see one as a child and were fascinated?

Did you come upon someone studying them when you were in grad school?

Like, what happened?

Not a lot of people are like, I'm the rattlesnake lady.

I know.

Sometimes I look back now and wonder, how did this happen?

What?

It's like such an esoteric specialty that we have, but all of us have our esoteric specialties.

And for me, you know, it's a really important one, I think, because I'm proud to be someone who can speak for these animals that don't have a voice and that really need it the most.

Yeah.

But no, rattlesnakes got me,

bit me figuratively in college.

I was not a kid that was running around chasing snakes.

Oh, really?

No.

I moved every two years as a Navy brat and we were outdoorsy people, but I was mostly obsessed with soccer.

So I'm an obsessive person.

Uh-huh.

And I was obsessed with soccer my entire life.

I played in college, and then I just transferred that obsession to snakes.

To snakes, yeah.

Soccer to snakes.

It was a college professor who handed me a snake on a field trip that did it.

What kind of snake was it?

It was a California king snake.

Okay.

And he found it under a log.

And I tell the story sometimes about how, like, my vision kind of went dark around the edges.

And I thought, look at this amazing tube of

muscle just squirming in my hands.

And can eat prey that's as big as it is without even using its hands and without taking a bite.

It's incredible.

Just a heads up, the non-venomous California kingsnake in the wild is most commonly a black and white banded kind of noodle or is black with a racing stripe, but it's a really popular pet species and the color morphs can range from blacks to browns and yellow to even pink and lavender gray.

And it's called a California kingsnake, I needed to know, because like other king snakes, it'll swallow a full other snake.

That's like you eating a wetsuit full of hamburger meat.

No chewing.

Now while we're in California talking kings, I need to let you know that a California king bed is not larger than a regular king-size bed.

A California king bed is four inches longer than a standard king bed, but it's also narrower.

So technically, the standard king-size bed gives you more surface area.

But yes, back to the non-venomous California king snake snake that Emily's professor found.

And then when I started learning about venom and how that works and the kinds of things that rattlesnakes do and rattlesnakes also being a little bit forbidden, you know, because they're venomous, got me really excited to start studying them.

They might be the gothist of all snakes.

Yeah, they're totally metal.

That's what my students say all the time.

Yeah, they really are.

And then, okay.

Let's distinguish what is a snake versus what is a pit viper.

A pit viper is a snake.

Not all snakes are pit vipers.

but is it those heat-sensing pits that make them a pit viper?

Yes.

So snakes are a lineage of gasp lizards.

They're a lineage of lizards.

Well, yes, evolutionarily speaking, they evolved from within lizards, adaptively radiated into thousands of species, all of them, you know, limbless.

P.S.

Limblessness evolved multiple different times within lizards too.

So it's not just the snakes.

Which is legless lizards?

Yeah, but like a bunch of different times separately.

Limblessness,

why did it evolve?

It seems like having little tiny hands, having little toenails would help you.

Is it just to snake through the grass faster?

What's the deal?

You're right on with that.

Yeah.

There's various hypotheses for limblessness, but the main one seems to be locomotion and speed.

Elongating your body and getting much smaller limbs allows them to kind of slither through the grass or even through the sand underground, burrowing a lot better and faster than

these beefy limbed lizards.

So that's why we we think it evolved.

It seems to correspond with the multiple times of limblessness, is that it corresponded with animals kind of moving underground and into these plant-filled areas.

And there are around 15 different families of snakes, depending on who you ask and if you're up for a heated conversation.

And they range from the familiar ones like boas and pythons and colubrids, which are the grass snakes and those king snakes, to more obscure families, such as the Asian pipe snakes and the Mexican burrowing snakes, and the the Elapidae, which includes cobras, coral snakes, and the mamba, among others.

So, snakes evolved, and there's multiple families of snakes.

One family is the family Viparidae, which are the vipers, and then one subfamily within that is Crotalinae, which is the pit vipers.

And you're absolutely right, pit vipers have these exquisitely heat-sensitive pits underneath their nostrils that can distinguish just like 0.0002 degrees Celsius difference in the background.

So, the idea is probably like they can see with their eyes, they can sense heat with these pits, and their brain probably forms some sort of overlaid thermal and visual image that helps them detect these warm prey that run by in pitch black.

Oh, that's amazing.

Well, with the pits that they are using like a thermal camera, you mentioned at night.

Are rattlesnakes, do they tend to be nocturnal?

Depends on where you are.

Okay.

I went to grad school at Arizona State University, and all summer long I was was out all night long.

I had to become nocturnal, which is hard for me because I am diurnal.

That's because in a desert where it's really hot, the snakes are going to be out at night exclusively.

It's just too hot for them to be out during the day.

But here on coastal California, they're much more diurnal.

They tend to be out during the day.

So it's much more weather-driven, I think, than anything.

Are they better hunters than other types of snakes or do they just have like cooler equipment?

I feel like that's a philosophical question.

So, how do we measure that?

If we measure that in terms of how much food they get, I would say no.

That the ambush foraging lifestyle leads to them getting less food.

Really?

Yeah.

So, they have to wait till something runs by.

Whereas a gopher snake is climbing up trees and raiding birds' nests, it's poking its head around and getting a bunch of rodents.

Rattlesnakes don't need as much food.

So, stalking and then waiting to hop out with a vampire surprise is not as food-yielding as going on a long trek looking for it, but it works for the rattlesnakes.

Rattlesnakes have an extremely low metabolism.

It's like all snakes have really low metabolism and low metabolic energetic needs, but rattlesnakes have almost an order of magnitude even lower than other snakes.

Really?

Yeah, so they just sit there and kind of turn off their bodies in between meals.

So they're not making any stomach acid.

Their heart actually shrinks up to being really small.

They just kind of go quiescent.

And then shockingly, as soon as they nab a meal, which can be months apart, even they can go for a year or more without food.

Oh my God.

How much do they eat?

So according to the 2021 study, thermal ecology and baseline energetic requirements of a large-bodied ectotherm suggest resilience to climate change, which of course Emily was an author on.

Rattlesnakes need about 500 to 600 calories per year.

That's like one or two calories a day.

Intermittent fasting rows could never.

They instantly turn on everything and the whole body just revs up and they fuel all that using their stored fat, but then they're going to get it back from the food that they eat.

And so they don't actually eat as much, but they don't have to eat as much.

And so they're very successful in their own right, but they don't need as much food and don't get as much food as those other snakes.

So efficient.

They really are.

Rattlesnakes specifically just have us beat.

How long do rattlesnakes live?

Do they hibernate?

Rattlesnakes will hibernate, absolutely, when it's in cold areas and they may not hibernate at all.

They might be active during the winter, just reduced activity.

Some people use a word called brewmate instead, but I don't really distinguish between those.

Essentially, they have a cold-induced drop in metabolic rate and they just sit and wait it out.

There's hang.

Yeah, and they live for a long time, to answer your question.

Many decades.

Many decades?

Yes.

No way.

Yeah, and this is something that I think is a really important thing for people to know about rattlesnakes is that

easily finding males, which are the big ones or males that are, you know, 20, 25 years old in the wild, but that's just kind of a typical adult male we know that rattlesnakes can live a lot longer i was just in san diego with my friend jeff lem and he's got a 29 year old snake that was an adult when he found it he's marked it multiple times wow and then there's one timber rattlesnake in new york that's over 50 years old and it was a female and do they get additional rattles like tree rings or is that flim flam

okay this is a perfect opportunity to introduce the concept that everything you've heard about rattlesnakes is flim flam

but there's a tiny grain of truth to it okay so rattlesnakes do add a new rattle segment every time they shed

and on average an adult rattlesnake might shed one time per year there's a grain of truth however

the rattles break off okay just like your fingernails break off yeah also rattlesnakes sometimes will you know shed more times sometimes will shed less times so now you cannot tell its age based on its rattle but someone like me or another rattlesnake biologist you can look at its rattle rattle and you can tell whether it's young or old based on the shape of it.

Because when it makes that new rattle segment at the base, it's the same width as its tail.

Oh, okay.

So if you see one that's got like a tapering rattle, it means that a few years ago when it made those smaller rattles, it was a little guy.

Oh.

So it's young.

Whereas if it has just this fat rattle that has no taper and it's broken off, you know that a few years ago it was a big girl already.

Uh-huh.

And so therefore she's an old grown-up.

So they come from the base of the tail.

They don't just keep adding little ones at the top.

Yeah, they add them at the base.

And so you can find them sometimes where they have a complete rattle string where the baby button, which is really obvious, it's rounded on the end.

They'll have that one at the end and then, you know, have, I don't know, eight or ten below it.

You can say that snake is maybe, I don't know, five or six years old because they tend to shed more when they're young.

But these are the kind of things we look at and we're just

guessing.

We don't know for sure how old they are.

What's another flim flam?

How much time do we have?

Well, the biggest one is that the bites from the baby rattlesnakes are more dangerous than bites from adult rattlesnakes.

That's not true.

No, it's not true.

And that one comes in all kinds of forms.

It comes in, oh, you know, the baby has more toxic venom.

That's actually possibly the grain of truth is that drop per drop sometimes baby rattlesnakes might have more toxic venom.

But I mean adults inject so much more venom that it's just doesn't really matter.

But bites from adults are far worse.

You know, they say that sometimes babies can't control their venom.

They can and they do.

Of course, I should preface all this by saying that rattlesnakes do not want to bite people and they very, very rarely do bite people.

But when they do, it is flim flam that the bites from the babies are worse.

Have you ever been bitten?

Yes.

What?

I can't believe I didn't ask this as soon as we sat down.

Okay, what happened?

Obviously, you live to tell the tale.

Yeah, I did, as does basically everyone else, too.

There's like...

Three and a half on average deaths from snake bite in the United States every year and most of those are people who failed to seek medical treatment.

Oh.

So I will never minimize the seriousness of snake bite.

However, it's important that people know that rattlesnakes are not there waiting to jump out at them.

So I was interacting with the snake.

It was what we call an illegitimate bite because I was engaging the snake.

Okay.

A legitimate bite would be if you step on one on a trail or, you know, you don't see it when you're gardening.

It's an accident.

Okay.

So Emily told me that a large percentage of rattlesnake-induced deaths in the U.S.

are from people who wish not to seek treatment with anti-venom because they are involved in religious, usually Pentecostal, snake handling spectacles to prove God's love and protection, which has got to be such a bummer for the snake.

The snakes are like, please, the Bible, don't bring me into your shit so much.

I just want to eat rats.

And it was one of my research animals in Arizona when I was in grad school in the lab, and I was studying it.

And I was doing the same thing all day, every day.

And I got

uncareful, I guess, and learned my lesson.

What happened?

You know, I went to the hospital overnight.

What was actually terrible, Ellie?

I was in the lab, and I guess things were slow at the good samaritan hospital that day because they sent like eight paramedics oh my god and everyone in the building was like what's happening and they made me go on the gurney even though i felt frank

what a spectacle it was terrible

uh so eight paramedics are like i gotta see this i want to where was it on your bod it was in my hand okay okay

yeah and i was lucky it was a western diamond rattle snake which doesn't imply lucky.

They're big snakes with lots of venom, but I didn't get much venom.

I had anti-venom.

I was there overnight and I ended up being fine.

I'll tell you, snake bite is something to avoid at all costs though, because it doesn't always turn out that way.

Sometimes people will lose the use of a finger or something, you know, your ankle.

It's terrible.

But rattlesnake bites can be avoided simply by not messing with the animal and by wearing proper footwear when you go on hikes.

Okay, like not Tivas or...

Yeah, all of us are now having those like sleek hiking footwear so we don't get stinky feet, breathable mesh panels.

Well, rattlesnake fang, we'll go right through that.

So let's get back to the days of the nice, big, thick leather hiking boots like we had when we were kids.

The Danner boots with the whatever has the red shoelaces that you see.

Pretty much.

Although I'll still say, you know, I've...

stepped next to on accident countless rattlesnakes and they mostly just sit there.

They do not want to bite.

They really do not want to bite.

In fact, I have a grad student starting with me in the fall who wants to study defensive behavior of rattlesnakes and he's coming up with this contraption about putting something next to it so it'll bite.

I said they're not going to bite it.

Like it's so hard to get a rattlesnake to bite.

It really is.

Is it really?

Yes.

Do they just see a wall of heat coming at it?

And they're like, this is Godzilla.

I'm not going to eat this.

I'm just going to wait it out.

And if they come for me, then shit can go down.

Yeah, basically.

I mean, it's really complicated.

So each rattlesnake has kind of three lines of defense.

Camouflage is the first one.

It doesn't want to give itself away.

A lot of times we'll be walking around looking for a snake and realize we stepped over it multiple times because it just blends right in.

Second one is rattling, saying back off.

And the third one is biting to defend itself.

They don't necessarily go in that order.

They all have personalities.

They do.

They totally do.

By studying them individually using radio telemetry, three different species over the past 25 years, you get to know their individual personalities.

And some of them would never even rattle or bite no matter what you did.

And some of them will rattle at you from 20 feet away and bite at the tongs every time because they're terrified.

So Yeah, you can make a generalization that they are scared.

They see this wall coming at them, or sometimes they only bite when you step on them.

But it really is really rare.

The actual truth is that we have tons of people out there and even more dogs who are sticking their faces in the rattlesnakes face.

And the rattlesnakes are defending themselves.

And occasionally, we get bites.

Very, very few.

There's like 800 in California every year, I think.

That's it.

Maybe 8,000 in the whole U.S.

And actually, a lot of those are other snakes, not even rattlesnakes.

I should ask, what did it feel like when you got a little nicked?

Did you feel any tingling or anything?

Or did you just go, oh, shit?

I definitely said oh shit yeah and maybe maybe maybe much worse than that um i did not have pain from the venom until much later when the swelling got really bad there's been a study that's been done where they interviewed multiple snake bite victims and found that it's highly variable some people feel this burning searing pain going up their arm or their foot some people feel nothing for a long time and i think mine was because I didn't have all that much venom as far as snake bites go, so I didn't feel anything for a while.

How much was your anti-venom?

So this was in the year 2000.

Okay.

Different anti-venom than we have now.

And my whole hospital stay was, I remember it was $15,000, which was paid for by my medical insurance.

Nice.

But remember, this was 25 years ago.

Nowadays, we're routinely having bites that are in the many, many hundreds of thousands, sometimes exceeding $500,000 and lately even exceeding a million dollars.

No way.

Is that because the anti-venom is just so hard to obtain?

This is why we're here.

Unobtainium.

The anti-venom is very expensive for really complicated reasons.

It's expensive to make.

The companies who make it have to keep lots of snakes healthy on hand to get the venom.

They inject the venom into either sheeps or horses, which then produce antibodies.

Don't worry, they're not hurt.

Take them out.

Produce antibodies to maintain those herds.

They have to make the antivenom, which consists of the antibodies to all of these toxins, purify it.

And then once they've made it, it sits unstable in a hospital refrigerator and will eventually expire if it's not used.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

And then, of course, we also know that just everything costs a lot in the United States pharmaceutical system.

Sure does.

Yeah.

Sure does.

In 2022, four people in the United States died from rattlesnake bites.

One of them was six years old and riding his bike, and the other three were dudes around 50 or older who kept captive rattlesnakes.

So your yearly odds in the U.S.

at least of dying by a rattlesnake bite are one in 100 100 million.

The best way to avoid that is not owning a bunch of rattlesnakes, even though they are charismatic and they do have a face card that is a sleigh.

Let's talk about how snatched their jawlines are.

I mean

like a triangle-shaped head.

Can you talk about their head shape, how it's so different?

Yes.

So rattlesnakes and other vipers have this triangle-shaped head because they've got these two big, juicy venom glands on the side of each head and if you were to you know dissect one and look inside you'd find that they were tightly wrapped in muscles that when the rattlesnake strikes which if you blink you'll miss it they will open their mouths they have these fangs that fold out they're folded up in their little mouths when they're sitting there they fold out kind of like a pocket knife that hinges outward but tiny and hollow And the muscles around the venom gland contract and push that venom out through the hollow fangs, like hypodermic needles.

inject it into the prey,

usually let go, and the prey runs off somewhere and dies.

And then the rattlesnake can follow the smell trail of the envenomated prey.

So that's what gives them those big, poofy heads.

And the southwestern speckled rattlesnake, those ones have the poofiest head of all.

They do?

Why?

Well, it may have something to do with the relative size of their fangs and what they eat and the types of venom they produce.

But they look like just, you know, stocky little teddy bears with those huge heads.

What about the venom itself?

What is in it?

What does it do?

Is it like an anticoagulant?

What does it do to their prey where it just sort of stumbles off and then has like a very cinematic death in a bush?

Yeah.

Lots of stuff.

So we call the venom cocktails because they're full of so many things.

Proteins, including cytotoxins, which means cell toxin.

So it starts to eat away at cells and tissues.

It contains, in some cases, neurotoxins that may interfere with the breathing muscles of the prey.

Definitely contains hemotoxins, which is what you just mentioned, things like anticoagulants, also some coagulants.

Oh.

They don't cancel themselves out.

They just cause a massive dysregulation of blood flow.

Oh.

And depending on the type of rattlesnake, because venoms really vary dramatically.

And depending on the prey and its resistance, death will come from this bleeding internally or from neurological effect.

So many different things that can do it.

But venoms also contain a single protein that is not a toxin.

And for years, they couldn't figure out what the heck it did until removing that protein meant that the rattlesnake couldn't find the envenomated prey anymore.

Whoa.

So it's called a relocator protein because it instantly causes the smell of the prey to change so that it leaves a unique scent trail, you know, on top of all those other rodent trails that have run over there all night.

I mean, that's just so cool, right?

That's so advanced.

It's incredible.

That's nuts.

What I have, I should ask, what's the most beautiful rattlesnake?

If we can be superficial.

I know.

I like to say sometimes that it's like asking a parent to pick their favorite child.

Yeah.

Like, it's impossible, but actually, there is one.

If you guys tell the truth.

It's so real.

So I like the Arizona black rattlesnake because they, in many cases, are like pitch black with these just incredible orange spots on them.

So that's an Arizona black rattlesnake.

And they also will change their colors throughout the course of a day based on temperature.

You know?

Like a mood ring.

It's impressive.

And all rattlesnakes will change their colors a little bit, but the Arizona black rattlesnake is the king of it.

They can be kind of like a grayish background with the dark spots.

And then almost before your eyes instantaneously go complete black with these orange spots.

How does it benefit them?

No one really knows.

We have a paper we published suggesting that the stress hormones, which if they get stressed out, their background color gets a little bit darker, it might cause them to be able to blend in a little bit better, but it's totally hand-waving.

We don't know for sure.

Oh, that's so cool.

I know.

And to go way back on this, you can see the 1941 paper, The Pituitary Regulation of Melanophores, the Rattlesnake, which notes that the removal of the pituitary causes a permanent paling of color, which becomes more evident after the shedding of the old epidermal layer, which had that previously deposited melanin.

So people have been fascinated on the inner and the outer workings of rattlers for years, of course.

What about who's doing good work in conservation and outreach for rattlesnakes, including yourself, like to donate to if there's a cause?

Yeah, there's lots of causes out there.

So.

A few of them include advocates for snake preservation.

They're a wonderful nonprofit that helps with human-snake coexistence, primarily in the U.S.

There's Save the Snakes, which is based in Sacramento, sacramento that does worldwide work on human snake coexistence and then in terms of not non-profits but other groups that are working on rattlesnake kind of um public relations i like to say there's uh rattlesnake solutions is a popular one that i encourage people to follow they're a for-profit company that does incredible work in arizona relocating rattlesnakes from people's yards so that people don't have to kill them anymore nice and i do that too on a voluntary basis on my little tiny slice of the california central coast but in arizona they're doing as many in one day as I do in the whole year.

Oh my God.

And these people do an incredible job on their YouTube channel of educating people about rattlesnakes.

Because in the summer, they're more

looking for the moisture.

They're looking for a wet spot on the ground to cool off, somewhere to get a drink.

I don't get how the hook works.

You're out there with

something that looks like what you would turn a garden sprinkler on with.

It looks just like a small pole with a little crook at the end.

How do they not climb up it rattlesnakes almost never climb up the hook because they're trying to get away from you okay however they will climb off the hook okay i am not a hook girl oh no no way i thought that was the only way to do it no i have tongs whoa okay and you know what like you could get a few different herpetologists in a room snake biologists and it would just be knock down drag out about arguing about the best tools everyone who has a profession has their best tools but part of it is because of the type of snakes i work with so i work with the northern pacific rattlesnake and they're squirrely.

They're wiggly.

And if you try to use a hook, they're going to just get away into a bush or down a burrow.

If I lived out east and I was working with big rattlesnakes like eastern diamondback rattlesnakes or timber rattlesnakes, you couldn't fit a tongs around them and it might hurt them to use those.

These types of rattlers are the big guns growing up to seven feet and weighing over 10 pounds with a girth as big as a soda can.

It's not a tong situation.

And they're really slow.

So instead you pick them up with hooks.

So, you know, I teach training classes on how people can use hooks and tongs because it doesn't look easy and it's something that people want to be good at.

Save the Snakes also does that.

And Rattlesnake Conservancy is another really great group that I failed to mention earlier that runs a bunch of snake handling classes throughout the country.

Cool.

We'll link all those sources on our website at alleywar.com slash ologies slash curtilology, of course.

So there's lots of ways to learn, but people should definitely learn because if you look on YouTube, you'll see a lot of people doing things you shouldn't.

Like what?

Like freehandling rattlesnakes, like literally picking up rattlesnakes with their hands.

No.

yeah and you know even if they're not getting bitten which presumably they're not going to post right as well bitten they're really just setting a bad example of how to interact with wildlife that's stressing the snake out more a kid could see it and copycat them yeah i have no patience whatsoever for freehandling especially for freehandling when people are doing it and posting it for attention yeah if you're gonna post it for other people to look at shame on you right and you know it's a rattlesnake so you know that it's venomous you you'd have to be living under a rock more than a rattlesnake to not know you shouldn't handle it they know they're doing it they do it because it demonstrably brings in clicks and likes and you know money on youtube yeah people love to watch scary things and speaking of just i mean rattlesnakes in general you know a lot of people are scared of rattlesnakes but nobody's ambivalent people love or hate them you know fear or or like them and so they get a lot of attention yeah and a lot of times it's just the negative attention so i really try to bring it around to the positive attention.

You're a good PR person for that.

I try really hard.

Well, you know, we have a slogan and it's love the unloved.

Because it's, I don't know, it's kind of like a snake version of the Lorax, right?

We speak for the snakes because they can't speak for themselves.

Yeah.

A good way to think about it, and this is sad, but it's helpful, is just picture in your mind whatever your favorite wildlife species is.

Let's do baby deer.

Let's do bambies.

It could be anything.

And then I want you to picture the idea that it crawls into someone's yard yard.

And the reality is that this thing is a rodent-killing machine.

It controls rodent-borne diseases like Hantavirus and Lyme disease, et cetera.

And it just doesn't want to bite people.

It just minds its own business, but it gets its little head cut off.

Your favorite wildlife does.

And people think maybe that they're doing that in a humane way, but decapitation is very inhumane because the snake's brain lives for hours afterwards.

And it's sitting there in the pain and suffering.

It's literally my worst nightmare.

Oh, God.

And then in places like Texas and Oklahoma, there's these rattlesnake roundups where, again, picture your favorite wildlife just being collected for weeks by the thousands and put in these metal drums where they're just the ones on the bottom are squished into soup and then brought out for the and just you know tortured and killed for the entertainment of thousands to bring in money to this community.

And you know, importantly, they do use all of the animals, all the parts of the animals.

You know, they don't waste any parts of those bodies, but it's just done in an unregulated way.

And these Roundups will serve rattlesnake fritters.

They'll sell tchotchkis made of dead snakes.

And the roundups of yore, of which a few still exist, gather rattlers in the wild by filling up burrows with gasoline, which can also kill and flush out hundreds of other organisms in the wild, including gopher tortoises.

And then once rounded up by the thousands of pounds, these live snakes are brought to an arena, they're put in a big pen, sometimes covered in their own shit, and then they're stomped on, their mouths are stitched shut for photo ops, and then they're slaughtered in front of onlookers.

And one article published by the Yale School of the Environment quoted the executive director of Advocates for Snake Preservation, who describes the constant buzz at these things of defensive rattling as, quote, the sound of a thousand snakes screaming.

And the article also noted that Western diamondbacks kill about one Texan a year, and the single death in 2022 was a handler at the Freer, Texas Roundup.

So the rattlesnake hunts tend to kill more humans involved with them than out in the wild.

Now, thankfully, people are horrified by these practices and they're looking for other options.

There's plenty of rattlesnake festivals.

There used to be these rattlesnake roundups, these kill festivals, but now there are no kill festivals that bring in just as much money to communities.

They're in celebration of wildlife.

So sometimes picturing that and picturing it being an animal that you care about can make you see rattlesnakes in a different way because they don't deserve what they get.

Yeah.

You know, they live for many decades.

There's study after study that shows they have these complex social systems.

They have family and friends.

They hang out with each other.

Really?

The moms take care of the babies, Ali.

Oh, for how long?

For, well, in some cases, it's like a week or two, but in other cases, it can be for the entire fall and winter.

We have a live streaming camera on a rattlesnake den.

It's called Project Rattle Cam.

It's the best thing I've ever done.

People can tune in and watch this complex parental care where we actually have babysitting aunties that will watch the babies.

And when the babies are born, their little umbilical cord breaks.

We actually got to see live birth the first time live on YouTube last summer.

And they're viviparous?

Yeah, they just give live birth.

And we got to see it.

They punch their little faces out of the antiotic sack and take the first breath.

Allow me to direct you to the paper, Family Values, Maternal Care in Rattlesnakes is More Than Mere Attendance in the journal Nature, which observed wild rattlesnakes in a den and they found that live birthed birthed rattlesnake babies are tailed by their moms to make sure that they're safe and okay for like weeks.

And in the springtime, pregnant snakes and new moms will all hang out.

And the aunties help watch over the baby rattlers, warning them when there are potential predators or scaring off the predators.

And the grown babes even return to the same winter den as their mom.

It's like going home for the holidays.

But what are the males up to?

Well, according to the study, they are co-parenting.

Male rattlesnakes will chill with the babies and let them coil on them and around them, proving that, yeah, even a male rattlesnake is a better dad than your cousin's ex-husband.

Males do, of course, have another role.

And I'm proud to say that at a coffee shop today in public, I googled what kind of penis do rattlesnakes have and discovered that, yeah, like many reptiles, they have a hemi-peen or a forked pronged dong situation.

But how do they dust it off to make babies?

So an article by Advocates for Snake Preservation titled Rattlesnake Romance gushed that rattlesnakes are great romantics.

Males may spend a week or more courting one female to convince her of his worth sitting nearby, next to, or even stacked on top of a female.

And then the male will rub her all over her bow day with his chin to say, I'm into this, are you?

And if she is not, she will thwack him on a stupid face with her tail, which is not only sad for him, but also embarrassing because presumably it's like yelling, I am not horny for you, while shaking a tambourine.

But what if you are friend zoned by a rattlesnake because you are another rattlesnake?

Do they have friends or roommates?

Wondered Adam Weaver and rattlesnake lovers Harley and Andy Pepper, Charlotte Fjelkegaard, Zink, and Rowan Tree, who asked, are they social or isolationists?

So a 2023 Frontiers in Ethology study titled, Social Security, Can Rattlesnakes Reduce Acute Stress Through Social Buffering, found that rattlesnakes are cryptically social.

They exhibit kin recognition and social networks.

And it continues that, quote, we tested for the presence of social buffering against an acute stressor in 25 wild-caught Southern Pacific rattlesnakes when alone, in the presence of a rope, and in the presence of a same-sex companion.

And results indicated that the presence of a companion significantly reduced stress-induced emotional heart rate elevation compared to the other treatments.

So hell yeah, they do have buddies.

And people don't know this.

And so, this is why it's my job to tell people this because if they know, in many cases, it's going to change their minds.

Yeah, we don't need to love a rattlesnake, yeah, but we need to respect the rattlesnake and they don't deserve to have their heads cut off.

There's people all over the United States that will come for free and take that rattlesnake out of someone's yard and relocate it into the wild where it can continue to do its wonderful snake stuff.

Yes, not in your yard.

Can I ask you questions from listeners?

Yes, of course.

We have some,

and and

obviously

a big one on people's minds.

We will reveal those questions in just a minute, but first let's send some cash to Emily's Choice, which is the Rattlesnake Conservancy, which is a nonprofit committed to the long-term preservation of imperiled rattlesnake species.

And their mission is to advance the protection of rattlesnakes and their habitat through research and education.

And you can find out more at the adorable URL savethebuzztales.org, which is linked in the show notes and at our website.

Also, again, shout out to Project Rattlecam.

We've linked that in the show notes as well.

So you can watch some live rattlers in their natural habitat.

Thank you to sponsors of allogies for making that donation possible.

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Many people asked about Lauren Allegra, Boris Grozi, Nathan Marion, Amanda, Jessica Schlarbaum, and Debbie Helm all wanted to know in Jessica's words, I've seen rattlesnake aversion classes for dogs in areas that are high risk for running into a rattlesnake.

Flim flam, or do those classes actually work or does it depend on the dog?

Are they ethical considering they use live rattlesnakes?

What do you do if you got a dog?

You go on hikes and you can't have a sit-down sit-down with the dog to say, hey,

don't do that?

Such a great question.

So it depends on many different things.

First of all, in general, yes, a good rattlesnake aversion training course, highly recommend it.

It can prevent your dog from being bitten on the face.

Okay.

So what they do is a good trainer will be one, you want to look for a trainer that knows how to take care of rattlesnakes and also is a dog trainer, which are rare to find, but they exist out there.

Like, you don't want me doing it because I know how to take care of rattlesnakes, but if you met my dog, you would know why I'm not a dog trainer.

And then, you know, you also don't want a dog trainer who just has like a rattlesnake that it's not treating right or doesn't know how it works.

Anyway, they'll do it usually with a live rattlesnake, safely muzzled, sight, smell, sound of the rattlesnake, and they'll pair it with an e-caller, a mild buzz, not even a big shock.

And the snake is basically a stimulus that the dog associates with pain, which it won't when it actually gets bit, by the way.

Really?

No, because it's much later that the dog feels the pain.

It's not instantaneous.

So it doesn't realize that the snake is what bit it.

Oh, no.

So what they're doing in these classes is they're simulating a snake bite.

So I do recommend that people do it, but do their research on finding a good trainer.

And then remember, it's not going to be foolproof.

The dog might step on a rail of snake and tall grass.

It could still be bitten, but it's going to prevent.

most bites, which are when the dog sees something wiggling, it says, what's that with its little nose?

Yeah.

So spring through fall is the most likely time that a curious and especially off-leash dog may get a snake bite.

But there are classes like one offered by the the company Ma and Paw Kettle Training Services.

And yeah, that involves taking dogs through this 10-minute saunter past live but muzzled rattlers.

And those are cared for by trained herpetologists.

And that teaches the dogs the sounds and smells and the looks of these rattlesnakes.

Now, what if you can't make it to a good course?

What if you're one of the rare unlucky pets who gets envenomated?

Well, a 2024 Sacramento Bee article titled, A Rattlesnake Just Bit Your Dog.

Here's what to do, experts say.

And that that advises, first off, keep pets on a leash, stay on trails, avoid tall grass and wood stacks or rock piles.

And if bitten, try to keep the dog calm.

And don't apply a tourniquet or try to suck the venom out.

Just rinse the wound quickly and get yourself to a vet ASAP.

And the good news is that with proper treatment, 80% of dogs survive a rattlesnake bite.

More on dogs in a minute.

But first, let's move on to moving on.

Danielle Napolitano.

Great question says.

Hi, I live in Arizona and have come to really appreciate and love the rattlesnakes here, but I did have a question about relocation.

I read somewhere that rattlesnakes are pretty territorial and does relocating them somewhere far away from where they've grown up mess with their chances of survival.

I want rattlesnakes near my house, but I also don't want to doom them to death if we have to move them somewhere really far away.

Anyway, thanks.

Bye.

And as someone who moved a lot, as a child, what do you think of relocation or the snakeies?

That's a really awesome question.

So glad we have a chance to talk about this.

This is something that I do in my research lab at Cal Poly.

People like Brian Hughes at Rattlesnake Solutions are doing research on this too.

And the answer is that if you move a rattlesnake a short distance, it's fine.

They do fine.

If you move a rattlesnake a very long distance, they might do fine.

They might not.

But the most important thing is moving moving them into good habitat.

You have to make sure you're not letting them go on the side of the road in some random place, they need to be let go into some place where they can, you know, recover after just being abducted by an alien, essentially,

and then be in that good habitat, especially in a place like Arizona, where your question asker lives, where it's really hot.

And if you put them in the wrong spot, they could succumb to the weather.

So that's why there's companies like Rattlesnake Solutions who will do the hard work for people.

Like I said, we do it as well on the Central Coast.

There's a free snake relocation.com.

People can find a snake relocator near them who says when they sign up for it, they have to say that they abide by the short distance relocation rule to be able to do that.

They'll take them to a spot that has shade and habitat because they can quickly die if they're overexposed to the heat.

So someone shows up with a bucket and maybe your biggest fear is dispatched safely away next to a gopher burrow or a pack rat nest in the wild.

The snake has a buffet.

You walk around your patio a little more chill.

they save a snake's life which feels awesome and yes people do volunteer to do this because they love snakes and they cherish wildlife and we love them for it do you tip them um yes so it's really a good idea to tip your relocator sometimes they're driving hours

sometimes for free Yeah, there's just this huge network of people who, like me, will do anything to save the life of an individual rattlesnake.

What's a good tip for a rattlesnake relocator?

It really depends on how far they went.

If they came from down the street, you know, I'm sure that 20 bucks would be awesome.

But I would say that the average actual cost, because I know how much it costs because I have a team of 24 people and I actually pay them.

They're not employees, don't say anything, but I pass on, you know, we get donations and I kind of pass it on.

I pay them between $50 and $150.

And it's usually taking them about two hours.

Yeah.

So it's their gas and their time.

Yeah, yeah.

But of course, I mean, you know, someone just scrounges for change and gives $5.

That's nice too.

And then occasionally somebody will be very generous and will give $200.

Oh, yeah.

But take care of your snake relocators.

Yeah, they're doing it, you know, because not only are they spending their time and their gas, but they have chosen to be an advocate for an unloved animal and to do this because they want to make a difference and because they know that that snake will end up on the other side of a shovel if they don't.

If you were to ask a rattlesnake, where is home?

What would they say?

So patrons Patty, Earl of Gramelkin, Hannah Gorey, and Haley Bolzano all needed to know, in Haley's words, how small is their territory footprint?

I once saw one while hiking and it was within two feet of a rattlesnake warning sign.

Was this just serendipitous or do they normally stick to a small geographical area?

What about the territories?

You mentioned dens, but do they have their own sort of patrol area?

You know how people see like a cockroach and they say, if you see one, there's a thousand.

Do people have that mindset about rattlesnakes and is it accurate?

People definitely have that mindset and it's not really accurate.

So in biology the term territorial truly means that an animal defends a territory meaning like we keep another male out for example and they do not do that.

They have what we call a home range which is the area they use that's not defended and they'll overlap with multiple other ones and you'll oftentimes find them together.

So it really depends.

However, they do know that home range.

I think that's really what people are asking is do they have a place that they know?

So if you move them really far away from that home range they're going to try to find their way back.

And that's why the long distance translocation can be a death sentence.

It's true.

If you move them, and our rule of thumb is usually we try to do within a quarter mile, we tend to know where they are and they tend to not come back.

Okay.

Are they like, that's where I got abducted by an alien?

I'm not hitting that place again.

We don't know.

People have wanted to try to test that hypothesis, but it's a really hard sell to try to, you know, maybe have.

you'd want to try to give a rattlesnake a really bad experience.

And you don't want to do that.

You want to make it as easy and stress-free on the rattlesnake as possible.

That makes sense.

Some people asked about zombie bites.

TB33, Scotty D and Michelle Lee wanted to know.

TB33 asked, is it true that dead rattlesnakes still kill a high number of people?

Because even when they're dead, they can still bite.

Michelle asked, is this actually true or just high school rumor mill flim flam?

So yeah, you mentioned their brain can still be alive, but what's with these zombie bites?

Yeah.

There's a grain of truth, but it's mostly flim flam.

The reason it's mostly flim flam is that when the rattlesnake's head has been severed from its body, it is still alive.

It's not dead.

It can be alive for hours afterwards.

And yes, the head can still bite for hours afterwards.

So in that case, in that way, it's not flim flam

because it's still alive.

Once it's actually dead, which in a rattlesnake,

same actual definition as any other...

vertebrate, which is the brain is dead, then it cannot envenomate unless someone got their finger snagged on a fang.

So when my students and I are dissecting road-killed rattlesnakes, which we do in like a herpetology class, the TAs and I will wrap the head in medical tape so that the student doesn't accidentally touch a fang.

Oh, okay.

Because an actually like long dead, frozen and thawed rattlesnake could still envenomate somebody.

Ooh.

So yes, if you encounter a dead rattlesnake head, do not use it as a gruesome finger puppet or kiss it on its little dead nose.

Now, as long as we are talking remedies.

What about their venom for medicinal use?

Becky McDowell, Ara Victor, Janie Kinns, Sustainable Cyrenian, and Jack Ever8 wanted to know: are there any health benefits in Sustainable Cyrenian's words?

For humans, yeah, what is going on with the venom there?

Can I say how much I love your patrons?

They ask the best questions.

Yes, this is usually something I talk about, and I just must have known that I could wait until the questions.

Always.

Yes, so there's a couple of drugs on the market, well, there's a few drugs on the market from snake venoms, including one very prominent drug that saves thousands of lives every year that is literally made from pygmy rattle snake venom.

Pygmy rattle.

How big are are those little guys?

They're small.

They're so cute.

They're over in like Florida and they're little bitties, like, you know, a foot and a half long, little cuties.

Cuties.

I love them.

They have the tiniest little rattles.

Oh.

And they just go,

little baby.

But anyway, they have an anticoagulant in their venom that is in a drug called eptifibatide, of course.

Which since 1998 has been saving the lives of many people who have stents put in their hearts to prop open their coronary arteries if they're at risk of a heart attack.

And that's because those stents can attract blood clots.

And this anticoagulant is particularly good at preventing those blood clots.

Are they able to synthesize that through like yeast or bacteria or does that do they have to milk the venom?

They now synthesize it.

They do.

Okay.

Because there's many more that are under development right now under clinical trials or are in use.

Like Captopril, which is one of the most common ACE inhibitors used to treat people with high blood pressure, comes from a Brazilian snake venom.

It's not a rattlesnake, but it's a pit viper.

And so these are initially made by milking snakes to get their venoms, but then eventually they are made in a laboratory.

They save more lives than take them, you know, dramatically.

Rattlesnake venoms save in the United States dramatically, dramatically more human lives than they take.

God, that's such a good fact.

Poor fucking rattlesnakes.

I know.

It's hard to think of any animal.

vertebrate especially that's more maligned and more unfairly maligned.

I can't think of a single animal that does more for us and actually resembles us more in terms of our social behavior and taking care of our babies, but is that maligned and misunderstood?

You know, on that note, Jacob Shepard, Average Pie, Dr.

Lena Carpenter, and Sweet Chili wanted to know, Sweet Chili asked, do rattlesnakes have an inner life?

Do they have feelings?

Or are they soulless, rattling, eating machines?

We know that's not true, but Jacob wants to know, Jacob Shepard asks, how intelligent are rattlesnakes?

I know that that's all relative.

Like you don't need a a rattlesnake to drive a stick shift to prove that it's smart, but what kind of cognition do researchers think they have?

Yeah, you preface that really well by saying that people have made the mistake over the years of trying to

relate all animal intelligence as some sort of fraction of human intelligence.

But the reality is that we couldn't be more different organisms, I don't think.

possible.

They are so much better and so much more functionally intelligent in the things they do than we are that if we were to reverse it, we would say that we're pathetic.

I mean, just think about the things that they're able to do and the decisions they're able to make out there.

Yeah.

We would not be able to do those things.

For example, fasting for one year and then breaking that fast with an uncooked gopher.

But in terms of the things that people typically mean, which is, you know, memory, cognition, decision-making, and so on, you know, snakes don't tend to fall very high on that ladder.

But there have been some studies within snakes that show that rattlesnakes are actually a bit more intelligent than some other snakes in the sense of being able to learn things.

So if you put them in a

maze in a laboratory with

there's a warm hole behind this, you know, this area, they'll learn to find that much more readily than other snakes will, if you will.

Oh, and I should have asked this earlier, but Hendrix Amanda Michaela Marshall wanted to know, in Hendrix's words, rattlesnake vaccine for dogs?

Is it effective?

Why don't we have this for humans?

Is there a vaccine?

Because I know that if you give someone anti-venom, you can also start making antibodies to the antibodies, right?

So what's going on with that?

Yeah, there's a rattlesnake vaccine, but it actually, I believe it's licensed or I can't remember what's what, whatever it's called, just ran out.

So it's not really even available, I don't think, anymore.

Yeah, quote me on that.

But no, I mean, I don't even spend time thinking about it because I don't recommend it at all.

There's no evidence that it works.

There's a group called National Snake Bite Support that people can follow, and they're the ones who are the experts on that.

They're the veterinary toxicologists, and they say it doesn't work, so I don't give it to my dog.

Okay.

Well, anyway, it's gone.

Wait, it's back.

Literally, as I was researching, there was this ongoing drama with headlines and articles going back and forth about the USDA essentially terminating then renewing the conditional license for the rattlesnake venom vaccine.

And the long and short of it is that for decades, this conditional license gets renewed for two years at a time because the results are kind of shaky because researchers haven't been able to make good experimental controls to envenomate dogs, which makes sense for the research dogs.

But Emily doesn't bother with it.

Okay.

And Jali Himalay, Susan Conbert, Amanda, Miranda Ramirez, Barbara M., Carlia Tanner, and Popita wanted to know, in Popita's words, what's the best way to handle an interaction with a rattlesnake?

If you have an encounter, number one,

you got to chill, right?

You got to cool your jets, I imagine.

What's the best way to handle it?

So if you see a rattlesnake out on a trail or in your local park, jump for joy.

You're so happy.

I love it.

Normalize seeing wildlife in nature.

But no, like if you come around a corner and, you know, you surprise one or you hear a rattling noise, it means you're too close.

So you just back away.

So slowly back away and then look for where the snake is because if you're 10 feet away from a rattlesnake, you're good.

Okay.

And then look for it.

Take pictures of it.

Share it with your friends.

Watch the snake for a while because snakes can do cool things.

Now, if it's nervous because you just scared it, it's probably just going to wander away.

But that's really all you need to do.

And then, like I said, if there's a rattle snake in your yard, call a local free snake relocation expert or a company that you can pay a small fee to and have them come and relocate that snake.

Do you advocate for people keeping their headphones on like transparent mode if they're hiking?

Because I know I've been hiking, I usually hike with headphones in, but uh, they died once and I heard a really cool rattle in the bushes.

It sounded almost like a sprinkler, like

you know, like,

see, the first one was a rattlesnake, by the way.

Also, hilariously, that YouTube clip with the rattlesnake sounds featured a thumbnail of a striking cobra.

So critologists like Emily have further to go in the way of rattlesnake awareness.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

But for hikers, safety for hikers, eyes, ears out.

What do you think?

Well, I mean, I advocate for not wearing headphones because you'll hear all the cool nature sounds.

The chances of someone stepping on a rattlesnake because they had headphones on, I think are relatively small.

Okay.

And that's because people typically aren't hiking through tall grass.

If you're hiking through tall grass, first of all, wear the right footwear so you don't have to worry about it.

And secondly, yeah, in that case.

Don't wear headphones.

But if you're on a trail and you're just aware and you're watching your surroundings and not talking to your friend, not looking at the ground, then you don't have to worry.

People get really nervous about rattlesnakes, like they're just laying there in wait to bite you.

They are totally not.

In most cases, when people see one, they're like, oh, look, it's just ignoring me.

Yes, it totally is.

Okay, so when hiking, boots are good and tuck those pants into your socks if you would like to make it harder for ticks to drink on you.

Now, for more on that, you can see our two-part Acrology episode about ticks.

And just please check your crevices after hikes.

What about this is my, this is my most burning question.

A lot of people, Dr.

Lena Carpenter, Janie Janie Kins, Teresa Liu, Cornell Halequist, first-time question asker, Magna Kasowska, Angela Borman, Marika, Susan Conbert, Dinah Phillips, and patron Marika, who asked, I'm a hiker terrified of snakes.

So of course I've had way too many close encounters with rattlesnakes.

There's so much conflicting information out there.

Do I suck it, tourniquet it, call for help and stay put, walk as far as I can, cut the limb off, build myself a coffin and pyramid out of sticks for my inevitable demise?

And in Dinah Phillips' words, I've heard that you don't have to cut the bite or suck the venom out or any of those scary heroic actions.

Do you just get to the hospital?

First time question asker.

But yeah, I always hear, you gotta suck the venom out and spit it, that you are shaking your head as if that is

a horrifying misconception.

So clear it up for me.

Yeah.

It will that, I don't know, that we're in LA right now.

That's kind of like a, it's, it's a movie thing.

It was only like in Western movies that it ever worked.

Yeah, it doesn't work and it's all it's gonna do is introduce a wound and then maybe someone's nasty mouth bacteria.

So no cutting and sucking, no tourniquets, no,

for goodness sakes, people are now thinking tasing each other is a good idea.

Oh, yeah.

You hear it all.

All you need to do is take off any jewelry if there's constricting jewelry and then have someone else get you to the hospital as quick as possible.

That's it.

Okay.

Don't do anything else.

Do not put the limb down.

Put it at heart level or above.

Yes, you heard that right.

Put the limb at heart level or above.

And if you're like, I I think that's backwards, it's not.

And I emailed Emily to fact check this and she said, yes, first aid recommendations for rattlesnake bites have changed over the years.

And the data now showed that in the extremely rare, almost fantastically improbable event that you ever get bitten by a rattlesnake, the pain management, swelling, and bite outcomes are actually better when the victims keep their limb elevated above heart level.

because you don't want to keep the venom concentrated at the bite site, but rather letting it spread through the body where it can effectively be diluted is preferable.

And Emily also said, your life is going to be saved by the anti-venom.

So go to the hospital.

And then the most important thing to do is once you're there is to be able to properly advocate for the right medical care because it changes a lot all the time.

And some physicians, or this is true for a veterinarian, if it's for your dog, they went to their medical or veterinary school since.

the time that some of these modern recommendations have been in place.

So national snake bite support can help people advocate for exactly the right kind of care.

But also, the likelihood that you're going to get bitten, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, absolutely tiny.

Think about the millions and millions and millions of people, and many of those people out on trails every single day.

Trust me, there's millions of rattlesnakes, too.

If you've ever been out walking around in the LA Hills, you have walked by a ton of rattlesnakes.

Oh, I love them!

Tons of them, they're just really, really common, they're just not commonly seen.

And then the statistics on like the chances of dying from one are hilarious.

They're so, so, so low that it's like

five or six times more likely that somebody would die from like lightning strike or a dog bite.

And then multiple times more than that more likely you'd die falling off of a ladder.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

So yeah, if you want to point a finger at an animal responsible for human deaths, aim a tiny one at mosquitoes and learn more about them in our colcidology episode, which is linked in the show notes.

So rattlesnakes are not a threat.

You know, the rattlesnakes are only a threat if people are routinely working in the places where rattlesnakes are and are not using proper protective equipment.

That's it.

I imagine too, especially in LA, you typically have to drive to a trailhead.

You can get smoked by a Mac truck.

Go in there, bro.

I know.

I didn't even want to say that.

I think that it's like 30,000 times or something more likely to die in an automobile accident than from a snake bite.

And yet we engage in that risky behavior every day, a lot of us.

Oh, yeah, without even thinking about it.

We don't hate our cars.

We don't hate our dogs.

Yeah, we're not terrified of them the way one might be.

What about snakes in the media?

Lenny Olset, Susan G.

Storm, Jen Genator, Lana Schuster, and Wemily wanted to know if there are any glowing representations or egregious ones.

Oh, and Aaron Farley had a kind of a complex but an astute question, and that's if the theme song from The Good, the Bad, the Ugly plays every time a rattlesnake comes out in the wild.

Um,

any Any

pop culture that you wish that you could pop up in the middle of the movie or commercial or label and be like, no, that is incorrect.

Everything about snakes that is shown is incorrect.

But I don't know, though.

I mean, it doesn't really bother me that much because it's all just kind of silly.

Usually it's campy, you know, like in snakes on a plane.

Yeah.

It's not real or Anaconda.

I loved that movie.

It's hilarious.

None of it's real.

It's the problem arises when people think it's real.

And those don't tend to come from pop culture.

They tend to come from maybe a nature documentary or a YouTuber who tries to make it look real when it's not.

And the idea of the fierce rattlesnake rattling and striking, which is what a lot of people think of, that is coming from nature documentaries that are doing a really bad job because that is not what rattlesnakes do.

That to me is way more dangerous than pop culture.

And when you say that's not what they do,

like what would you say they do do instead of what we're seeing?

They curl up like little cinnamon rolls and sit there and wait for rodents to run by and mostly ignore people.

And the fact of the matter is that that does not get a lot of clicks on YouTube.

Yep.

Although it should, and it's starting to.

You know, our rattlesnake live stream, Project Rattle Cam, is now got, you know, I don't know, we had like two and a half million views last year or something.

That's amazing.

And it's a live, you know, everyone sees the eagles feeding their birds.

So cute, right?

Yeah.

Well, rattlesnakes now have their own one where we can watch all the mama rattlesnakes together and then all of them caring for their babies.

And it's fascinating.

Tons of people come on there and say just watching these snakes kind of curling up and doing what snakes do is interesting.

It's not boring.

They don't have to be striking and being terrified and acting terrifying artificially to get people to be interested.

Watching a natural rattlesnake being natural is the cool thing.

And we've brought that now into people's living rooms and in people's computers.

So it's really cool.

You have to check it out.

How many typically chill in a den?

Well, this is at a rattlesnake den in Colorado that is called a mega den.

Okay.

And it's got hundreds of rattlesnakes rattlesnakes out there.

Oh, I love it.

It's like a house party, but with piles of snakes.

And the live stream was actually running on her nearby laptop screen out of the corner of my eye.

It was like the soothing screen saver of just pit viper wall to wall.

And so the students are actually, you know, it's a remotely pan-tilt zoom controlled camera.

So it's 24 hours a day.

And right now they're going to bed.

in a little crevice together.

And like, we saw 28 snakes once pack into this little crevice.

Babies.

Does the camera know to follow the movement or is there someone with a joystick on the other end, like the Nautilus?

There's someone controlling it, but it's being controlled remotely by our laptops here in California.

So is someone on like the midnight watch?

No, we have students running it from 8 a.m.

to 8 p.m.

mountain time.

And then for the other 12 hours in the middle of the night, it's either sitting stationary or we have some of our volunteers who are night owls who will get on there and interact and zoom in.

That's amazing.

It's really cool.

If I could be a ghost, one place I would want to go is a rattlesnake den.

You know what I mean if I could just not disturb them if I could float in if I could beam my consciousness or I suppose just watch the I could just watch the live stream well yeah watching the live stream is great it's an equity issue it allows people access to doing this because most rattlesnake dens are in places that people can't get to yeah or they're hidden you know because we have to keep it secret for the health of the snakes otherwise people will go and kill them but you could go you know because rattlesnake dens are not like a thing you could walk into yeah The crevices are really tiny they go into.

The den is what you'll see is like the snakes curled up on the outside of it.

I think they're such little cutie patooties.

They're amazing.

Hardest part about your job, I have a feeling it might be misconceptions about rattlesnakes, perhaps?

I might have said that early on, but now I am

obsessed with the right ways to fix those misconceptions.

So as a scientist, it wasn't good enough for me to go to these outreach events and talk to people and not know how it impacted them.

So now I actually have studies that I've done on which parts of what I'm saying impact people.

And so we have a published study, for example, that people who identify as women tend to respond more to the notion of rattlesnakes being good mothers and having families and friends, whereas people who are in the older generations respond better to the concept of rattlesnakes doing things for us, controlling those rodents.

So I kind of have learned now through actual studies how to change people's minds.

And it's a challenge that I relish because I know that it saves rattlesnakes' lives.

And truthfully, in case people are out there rolling their eyes and going, This crazy person wanted to save rattlesnake lives, saving rattlesnakes' lives is a safety issue for people, too.

What's good for rattlesnakes is good for people.

Relocating rattlesnakes, they're gonna be there no matter what you want, yeah, what you think about them, and living in peacefully with them is the way to be safe.

So, no, that's not the worst part of my job.

The worst part of my job, I think, is

the subset of people who are just mean-spirited

and who will try to get at you with, frankly, really stupid comments.

They always tend to involve like a hat band.

I'm like, oh, yeah, I've never heard that one before.

That's great.

Thanks.

But every March, when the Sweetwater Rattlesnake roundup rolls around, I have a weekend of mourning because I know about all those snakes being tortured.

And there's little I can do about it except for keep working, keep telling, keep spreading the word, and hoping that people will change.

People have been changing.

I'm convinced that on average,

people's opinions about rattlesnakes and frankly, all other unloved animals has been changing.

And it's an important issue.

If we can get people to change their minds about rattlesnakes, we can get people to change their minds about anything.

It's a sociological issue.

It's a fascinating psychological question, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Another fascinating question from Reina and Where is a Park, who asked, would you discourage eating them because we should be protecting our scaly percussion pals?

I mean, people do eat rattlesnakes, but I will say that rattlesnakes are not that good of eating.

People say they are.

I've had it before.

Someone, I was staying at a research station and someone ran over a big rattlesnake and right in front of us.

So we took the fresh body back and the chef cooked it for us.

And it was a lot of ribs, Ali.

Yeah.

It wasn't

that great.

It wasn't that great.

I think it's so interesting that I asked the worst thing about your job and getting bitten by a rattlesnake is not one of those things.

Just people understand that, that it's so much harder to see them maligned.

What about the best thing?

Is it when you see someone's mind changed?

That's incredible.

Yes, absolutely.

I mean, certainly the best thing I've ever done is this Project RailCam, these live streams, because we can see it reaching so many people and it changing so many people's minds.

And we have all these quotes we have of people who would say things like, I used to be horrified.

I love this one person.

I used to watch an abject horror.

And now I love them.

This year being the year of the snake, there is a huge event going on that surrounds World Snake Day, which is July 16th, 2025.

And that is called Snake Week, which me me and Melissa Amarello and Christina Zadenek of Australia, we all are organizing it.

And it's going to be around the world.

There's going to be events, many with live snakes that people can come out and see.

I love it.

This has been so wonderful.

I love rattlesnakes.

I will tell you, I think they're gorgeous.

And it's weird to be like, oh, I can't wait till I see another one.

But I can't wait till I see another one.

I agree with you.

It's true.

I mean, there really is no substitute for seeing them in the wild, but I think that hearing some of these things, maybe watching them on the snake live stream is a good preface for the main course.

Get out there, see a snake, text me a photo of it.

I love it.

Put your shovels away.

I know.

No more shovels.

Just call a friend, call a snake relocator, and know that that snake is going to go and keep taking care of its babies and eating those rodents out in the wild where it belongs.

So rattle off not smart questions to smart people because honestly, maybe not enough people ask them.

and now we've probably saved the life of a rat eating friend that we'll never meet.

I hope this week gets you so excited for the first ever annual snake week July 13th through 19th 2025.

You can check out snakeweek.org to learn about events online and in your area.

2025 it is the year of the snake so do celebrate.

So thank you so much to Dr.

Emily Taylor for waiting years to finally meet up and for being such a friend to the friendless.

Except now rattlesnakes have a lot of new friends and admirers, thanks to you.

And you can get some rattlesnakes in your eyes by checking out projectrattlecam.org, where you can even join a live chat with a camera operator who will point out nostrils and give you cool facts in real time.

I looked today and they have a message that says chat users have reached a conclusion that snakes are actually long cats.

Project Rattlecam on YouTube.

I love it.

Tell them ology sent you in the chat and tell a friend about it.

We have so many more links at alleywar.com slash ologies slash chrotology, which is linked in the show notes alongside the charity of Emily's Choice, the Rattlesnake Conservancy.

We've also linked that survey in case you'd like to submit some fun data about public rattlesnake opinion.

And we've linked her two books, California Snakes and How to Find Them and California Lizards and How to Find Them in the show notes.

She's also on Instagram at snakey mama and on Blue Sky at Emily Taylor Science and we'll link those in the show notes.

We are at Ologies on Instagram and Blue Sky.

We also have shorter kid-friendly episodes called Smologies.

You can subscribe to for summer car rides full of G-rated facts and stories.

Those are linked in the show notes.

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And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret.

And this one is so dark, but I'm going to tell you.

Okay, so I've mentioned this before, but I had a grandma who was just terrible.

And one time, my cousins and I and my sisters were like playing some game, and I forget what it was, like charades or something.

And it was

so bad.

My grandma was so mean to everyone.

My grandma was like straight up, not a kind person.

And I think my sister asked, name a way that grandma could die.

And one of my cousins just went, Pit Viper.

And forever in my family, when

my grandma would do something mean, one of us would look at each other and go, pit viper.

And it's,

it's not mean because we were like traumatized children, but pit vipers always have this association of like a terrible elder getting attacked by a snake.

And now I know that snakes are better mothers than she was.

So sorry, mom.

Mom's great.

Grandma, not so much.

Okay, I'm so sorry.

That was so personal.

Maybe I'll swap this out for a different one.

Okay, anyway, bye-bye.

Pachodermatology, homiology, cryptozoology, litology, nanotechnology, meteorology, normal pharmacology, mapology, seriology, celaty.

I love snakes.

Really a big fan of the snake, you know.

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