Pit of Serpents

That's right. Um, not slashes snake pit, which we were discussing before we started recording the show, but this idea of a pit of snakes, the sort of place you might want to drop a doomed hero or a damsel in distress, that sort of thing, right, And what I think the great place to start here is by discussing a sort of snake pit. I think it's very much a snake pit that we encounter in Raiders of the Lost Dark, a film that we've we've spent a lot

of time talking about on the show we did. We did a couple of episodes on the Ark of the Covenant that I encourage everyone everyone to go back and listen to. Where we we spin off. We frequently refer back to Raiders for examples of things that Raiders does that refers to various uh qualities of the arc in

ancient traditions. I was just thinking back on those Ark of the Covenant episodes, because I remember we talked about this one professor from the the nineteen twenties or thirties who had this crank theory that the Ark of the Covenant was a real historical artifact and it was a giant electrical capacitor. Yes, yeah, that was pretty good. Yeah. But what I was laughing at when you were talking, I'm sorry if I sort of interrupted, but I was laughing the fact that you called the pit in Raiders

a sort of snake pit. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a snake pit. I don't I don't want to beat around the bush here. It's very much a snake pit. Um. It is an amazing and really game changing one of the many amazing and game changing sequences in the film. Uh, it is the Well of Soul sequence. Now to refresh everybody. Uh. First of all, the Well of Souls is an actual place. It's a partially man made cave located inside the foundation stone under the Dome of the Rock Shrine in Jerusalem. Uh.

The name itself Pit of Souls. Well of Souls stems from medieval Islamic legend and this is where the spirits of the dead or supposedly awaiting judgment day, but that that it has nothing or very little to do with the Well of Souls that we encounter in Raiders of the Lost Ark in Raiders the Well of Souls, and this is straight from the Indiana Jones wiki is quote part of a temple built within the ancient city of Tennis where the Ark of the Covenant was placed after

Pharaoh Shishak stole it from Jerusalem. Again, that is entirely within the context of the Indiana Jones world. Don't confuse that with actual history right now, there is no indication that there's an actual pit of snakes in any archaeological site in ancient Egypt, right but it makes for a great scene because, of course, as we remember, what happens is that uh Indiana Jones and his cohorts discovered that, oh, this is the actual resting place of the arc. The

Nazis are off, they're digging in the wrong spot. So they open it up, and of course they immediately see it's full of snakes. He hates snakes. They lower him down anyway, they go his his friend, who is it, Sala Sala, Yes, Sala goes down with him. They crank the the arc up, and then that's when Belloc and the Nazis show up. They steal the arc and just for sheer meanness, they throw Marian down there into the pit with him, and then they seal him inside with

a bazilion snakes. Uh, there there are some bad dudes. And so now, yes, now are our hero and heroine are stuck down in the dark with a bunch of snakes. Actually they're not in the dark. I just remember that. I guess there are torches throughout the room. Yeah, they dropped a lot of torches. So it's actually remarkably and unrealistically well lit. Right, So this the scene, of course, is ultimately above reproach. Like like, there's so much in the film that if you think about it too hard,

it doesn't make a lot of sense. But if you're just writing the roller coaster that is the film, it's pretty great. It famously required some I think seven thousand snakes, including cobras, which were the only venomous snakes used. Reticulated pythons, which are native to Asia, not Egypt, but they're there. Uh, there's a Kenyan sand boa that you can find in Egypt,

but not a reticulated python. Uh. In the In the sequence, they also used legless lizards known as glass lizards, and if you look around online you'll frequently see that the herpetologist seems to have seemed to have a lot of fun watching the sequence and picking out as many snakes species as possible, because they apparently just were like, bring us all the snakes. If you have snakes that can be a part of our film, we need them. Dude.

I breat that brought out some weird guys. It's like, why, yes, I have quite a few snakes. Yeah. So herpetologists have spotted other python species in that sequence, garter snakes and um and while actual cobras are used to wonderful effect in there, Jonathan Crow on Snakes on Film, a website which you can look up, points out that we see a monocled cobra rather than an Egyptian cobra, probably due to the Egyptian cobra's infamous temperament. So it's just ultimately

easier to shoot with a monocled cobra. Nobody's going to notice the difference except herpetologists anyway. I think this is the cobra that you can actually see slightly reflected in glass. When there's glass between Harrison Ford and and the snake that's not supposed to be there. It's a it's an effect, I guess, to create safety. Uh. And I remember that being one of the first movie goofs I ever spotted that you could actually see the reflection in the glass

when you when there was not supposed to be glass there. Huh. You know, I watched that film um constantly at one point as a kid, and I don't think I ever noticed that. But part of that might have been that our copy was like a VHS copy that my aunt had made when it aired on HBO or something like that, So maybe the details of that were lost in the transfer. That's what they were counting on. Also just on snake Magic, because hey, you can get carried away in snake Magic.

It kind of makes you lose focus to the finer points. So, as we said, herpetologists have a great time sort of spotting the the different species ultimately kind of spotting the flaws in the sequence. But of course one of the big questions, one of the guess the big flaws that comes up that and if you've watched this as an adult or watched it too many times, you've probably wondered this, Hey, what are all those snakes doing down there? To begin with? Right,

I always had this exact same thought. Why are they there? Do they live there all the time or do they come and go? If they come and go, why do they come to the Well of Souls? What's for them there? If they live there all the time, how do they survive? Don't they need to eat something? Is somebody coming in and feeding them? Like? Do they just eat each other?

That wouldn't make any and so we've talked on the show before about how like a closed, exclusively cannibalistic population can't survive for any significant period of time because you need inputs of energy from the outside. It just it just doesn't make sense. Well, there's your there's some room for expanded universe fiction. There the secret cult of of priests who take care of the Well of Souls and feed seven thousand snakes weekend and week out throughout you

know the history of the place. That's a lot of gerbils. Now I decided to think about I thought about this long and hard the other day, probably harder than I've I've ever thought about. The snake sequence in Ark of the Covenant and I did. I decided to try and give it a grain of salt here, you know, and try and you know, think about a reason for all

this to happen. And you could, I guess you could argue, Okay, the Arc of the Covenant is down there, and as we know from the film, as you know from other accounts in those past episodes of stuff to boil your mind, that the Arc is supposed to do weird thing. It has weird properties. It does magical and sort of doomy things to its immediate surroundings. Right, it strikes the sons of Aaron dead after they bring strange fire in front of it. Yeah, so I started thinking, well, what if

it actually generated the snakes. I don't know that this option has ever been explored, and maybe it has, because one thing to think about is the Arc, after all, was said to contain, among other relics, Aaron's rod, which Moses was said to have cast down so that it might transform into a snake and eat the snakes transfigured out of the rods that were cast down by some Egyptian magicians. That myth sounds a lot funnier when you

paraphrase it. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's presented better in you know, the original text, but at any rate, it's rods turning into snakes duking it out for magicians. But you're saying it might be magic. I think that makes sense in the context of the movie. Maybe those snakes are magic snakes generated somehow by the arc and they don't need

to eat. Right. But if you're gonna be a you know, a total major todd about the whole deal and shout the ARC's power, then the question remains, why would a bunch of snakes species details aside, you know, ignoring the fact that it seems to have drawn in snakes from around the world, why would they be holding up in a desert tomb like this, because, like you said, surely there's nothing down there for them to eat, right, I mean, why would there be rats down there? And what would

the rats be feasting on? Um. The The other big idea, and one that will discuss a lot in this episode, are would be with the question are the snakes, you know, seeking shelter there? And if so, what are they seeking shelter from? Are they seeking shelter from the desert heat? Uh? That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Because, uh, if you remember from the film, Indiana's descending into the tomb at the coolest part of the night, like it's the it's like the the very late portion of the evening,

very early morning that they're descending. They go in when it's dark and they come out when it's daylight. Yes, it seems like that'd be the time the snakes should

be out and about on the hunt. So we're going to continue to chew on this question as we continue on through this episode, because we're gonna be looking at the very idea of a pit of serpents as it appears throughout fiction, human mythology as well as the natural world, and the the science of snake pits turned out to be far more interesting than I would have imagined going in. So uh so that's gonna be the last thing we get to and I promise you it's a pretty darn

good payoff. Yes. Now, the next place obviously goes to look at other cinema cinematic snake pits that have occurred before, some of them before Raiders of the Lost Arts, some of them afterwards. But I think they serve to sort of further illustrate the trope and we we have to point out that we used a website that was actually recommended to us by our compatriot, Lauren vogelbaumb. It's um.

It's maintained by Gary Nafis, who runs a website titled Guide A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of California. And he has this list snakes in movies. So if you go to California herbs dot com slash films slash Snakes in Movies list at html, that's the website. And it's really just a great database of films that have featured snakes in general pits in some cases, but many times mostly without pits. Uh. And then uh, Gary adds his thoughts about the snakes. We see how realistic it is.

And there are pictures as well. Yeah, and you might be thinking, well, I don't need to be told there's a snake in the movie Anaconda, for say, it's it's got more obscure ones as well. Yeah, it's it's you think you know snakes in films, but but you don't know them as well as Gary does. I actually I exchanged a couple of emails with him to make sure he was crediting him correctly on this website, and he did point out that he rarely sees an actual snake

pit in a film. And uh, but but we're gonna list a few examples here that that do, according to Gary, have snake pits. Okay, what's first? All right, Well, the first one here, and these are not in any picular order. There's one from nineteen seventy four titled The Snake Girl, in which an evil woman throws her adopted sister into a snake pit to die, but she mates with a snake and a snake girl is born. Apparently it's a

it's a Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cambodia production. Uh And and this is all we need to know from Gary's right up quote. Big Madame's henchman throws her into a snake pit to die. Instead, she lies down and caresses a big snake, and the next thing we see is baby snake girl surrounded by snakes. Okay, now, the next one,

this is actually one from his list that I accidentally included. Um, there are several different plays on like evil snake Girl or devil woman, Like there's this devilish femininity that is assigned to snakes at times and this particular one is Devil Woman, Evil Snake Girl from nineteen seventy and you should definitely look up the trailer for this one, because the English language trailer from you know, kind of has this this weird grindhouse vibe to it, and it's it's

absolutely amazing. The picture itself is from the Philippines and it has loads of snakes and Medusa hair and uh a bunch of like extended martial arts action sequences. The narration promises the movie will strip your nerves screamingly raw, screamingly raw. Yeah. Now, another one that Gary includes on the list is one that that we're both very familiar with, The Blade Master, better known especially to fans of Mystery Science Theater three thousand as Cave Dwellers from N four.

Absolute classic. Yeah, this is this is a Joe Dermato film. Um and I've I've seen it multiple times, yet I completely forgot about the snake pit, probably because it's a pretty skimpy snake pit, not many snakes. Yeah, it looks kind of like a very small concrete pool that has been drained of water and filled with just a puddle of snakes. Um, and that's about it. Yeah, so Cave Dwellers is one of the great leather type or Barbarian movies. I think it's not quite as exquisite as your Hunter

from the Future, but it's up there. Uh. And I think the snake pit scene in this is a kind of straightforward attempt to rip off the snake tower pit in Cone in the Barbarian but in a very cheap and shaggy way. I remember one of the supposedly hilarious things about this scene in the movie is that the snakes growl instead of hissing, which, of course you know, that's the source of much amusement, kind of like if you had a pack of dogs in a movie that

started to move. But here is where science intrudes, because we who laughed at that are now we are officially clowned by reality. I decided to look at the scientific literature just real quick to check and make sure there were no records of actual snakes that growl, and there

absolutely are, so just to look at one paper. This was published in the Journal of Experimental Zoology in nineteen by Bruce A. Young, called Morphological Basis of Rowling in the King Cobra Opheophagus Hannah So Bruce Young notes anecdotal reports that while many snakes, of course produce a hissing sound, we all know that they'll they'll hiss in response to

a thread as a kind of defensive signal. A couple of species of snake have been noted to emit a hiss that is so low in frequency really people say it sounds more like a growl, almost like the growl of a dog. And most notably this includes the king cobra Opheophagus Hannah, which seems to attain a deeper growl as it gets larger with age. And the snake grows longer as it gets older, and I think that this

deepens the frequency of its vocalization. Right. Actually, I think technically, in scientific terms, it would not be called a vocalization because it's more based in the hissing emission of air. But so Young did a bioacoustic analysis of the defensive sounds produced by twenty one different species of snakes, and he writes quote, the typical a kiss is described as having a broad frequency span from roughly three thousand to

thirteen thousand hurts and a dominant frequency near hurts. The growl of the king cobra differs from the typical snake kiss in consisting solely of frequencies below undred hurts with a dominant frequency near six hundred herds. So that's pretty low for a snake. And this growl appears to be an adaptation created by changes in the shape of the upper respiratory tract what Young calls quote tracheal diverticula, functioning as a low frequency resonating chamber. And they tested this

idea a couple of ways. First of all, they constructed a fake mechanical model of the cobra's trachea, and then finally, their second test is just out of the park. You know that trick where you suck a helium balloon and then your voice gets really good. Well, they tried that on another type of growling snake known as the mangrove rat snake or ganio Soma oxy cephalum quote. Flushing the respiratory tract of G. Oxy cephalum with helium produces a shift of over a thousand hurts in the growl, a

shift that is indicative of a resonance effect. So, anyway, king Cobra's growl, these mangrove rat snakes growl, and that that's so good. So perhaps this is a Do you think this is a situation where the film accidentally gets something right about the natural world, or do you think the filmmakers we're just familiar with the sort of sounds that some snakes actually make. I mean, I like to have a generous estimation of other people, but I don't know.

I think in this case, they might have just bumbled into it. I don't know if we had herpetological geniuses on set here. Yeah, yeah, I guess it. I've seen some other Joe Diamatto films, and I would say that that that level of detail doesn't really match up with what I know of his work. I think this is just a dog mooing and then maybe later people found out that there are some breeds of dogs that move. I think you're right. All right, let's let's roll through

a few other films here. Worth mentioning. Gunga Din from nine is certainly a film I've heard of before, I've never actually seen it. Uh, Indian cultists who I think are supposed to be um buggies, uh torturing British soldier by threatening to throw him into a snake pit. And this is again a famous film, probably an influence on Raiders, and almost certainly an influence on its follow up slash prequel Temple of doom Um. Again, haven't seen it, but I looked at a picture on on Gary's website, and

I have to say, snake pit looks pretty shabby. I guess it's just yeah, there are a few. I mean, I guess there are two ways looking at it. Either you build that set and then you just you your eyes are bigger than your stomach when it comes to how many snakes you can actually fill it with, you know, or it's just hard to fill a space with snakes.

Or it's a situation if you're if you're really afraid of snakes, if you're building designing that pit with a rich fear of snakes in mind, you don't have to add that mini they're right because you think, oh, they're gonna be after me. One snake is terrifying enough. I guess that's true. But snakes are not like lions. I mean, the snake would not want to be anywhere near you. I think the idea of a snake pit sort of works is something that's really scary. If it's just full

of snakes, where the snakes couldn't even get away from you. Yeah, I agree. A few other ones that are worth mentioning Off of Gary's list, there's Entered the Devil from nineteen seventy two, which which sounds pretty fun, he says, it's it involves quote a cult of monks with torches and brown hooded robes chanting in high church Latin. Uh, perform human sacrifices in an old mine in the desert. When they're not stabbing people through the heart, they like to

throw their enemies into pits of rattlesnakes for a slower death. Okay, sounds fun. Uh. Seven's Angel of Vengeance or war Cat has a woman who is abducted and gets revenged by throwing one of her captors into a pit full of rattlesnakes. Uh. And this seems to be like a California grindhouse style film with a with a with a sort of California style rattler pit. It sounds like there's a whole subgenre

of rattlesnake pit movies. Yeah. Because, of course, the big examples of this would be uh, the nineteen sixty nine film adaptation of True Grit and the Cohen Brothers two thousand ten adaptation of True Grit. In both of them, a girl falls into an abandoned mine that is full of rattlesnakes, and uh, yeah, I've I've actually only seen the Cohen Brothers version of this, and I've never read the book, but but I like that what I saw

quite a bit. The rattler den scene is quite memorable, and Gary offers this critique of the original version on his website. Quote, snakes do hibernating groups underground during the winter, uh, to keep them from freezing, and during summer to keep them from overheating. And if threatened by a girl with a stick, a rattlesnake would surely strike to protect itself. And it's only the one snake she gets too close to that bites her. The others just dispersed to get

away from her. So uh. In other words, as far as snake pits and films go, this seems to be like one of the best examples, as in like the most realistic, most scientifics Yeah, the most realistic example. So there there are a few rattlers down there, presumably maybe maybe taking shelter from the heat of the sun or or sheltering for the winter. I guess that I think that takes place in a cold part of the year in true great The book by Charles Portis is a

great read, by the way. Oh cool. Yeah, it's one of those that I've had recommended to me before. Maybe the next time I'm in the mood for a good Western, I'll finally pick it up. So, but that's one of the more believable ones in the movies. Maybe maybe we should look back to the sources that that go back beyond these movies. Uh, I guess looking at the idea of snake pits in mythology and snake pits in reality. Yeah, we'll do it, but first let's take a quick break.

Thank thank alright, we're back. So I spent a little time the other day looking around at various snakes in mythology and uh, and for a little bit I was having a hard time finding good examples of snake pits, because you see a lot of examples of solitary snakes and even giant snakes cosmic snakes um, rather than dens or pits of snakes. And I think there's probably a

good reason for that. I mean, generally, when we encounter snakes in the world, we're encountering them engaging in solitary behavior. They're generally solitary predators. And on top of that, like we're very impressed by snakes, like snakes, uh, you know, make an impact on us. They are potentially dangerous to us depending on the species, And we have a lot of symbolic baggage that we uh, that we put on

the snakes. So whenever we encounter a snake or see a snake, we have all of these other associations that are bound up in its identity. Yeah, and there's also still the interesting unresolved question of whether we have certain types of animal morphology is namely often snakes or spiders somehow instinctually recognizable. That that's not a fully settled question in science. I think there's still arguments on both sides.

But we've talked about some of the research on that before, such as the idea that uh, even in babies who haven't been acclimatized to a culture that that puts emphasis on snakes, that say, their pupils might dilate in a

special way when faced with images of snakes. Yeah, so let's look at a few different myth and mythic and legendary examples of snake pits, and ultimately, like the weird and wonderful thing about it is that these are all three that we're going to discuss related European myths, and not just like you know, um uh, necessarily continental Europe, but we're talking like far north. We're talking about Scandinavian tales, all of pits with venomous serpents in them. Northern Europe

the place for snakes. Ye, so, and will definitely begin to unravel that question here in just a second. But yeah, the first example comes to us from Norse legend, the legend of Ragnar Lodbrock or loath Brock, king of Danes and Swedes. Uh. He was a staple of old Norse poetry and Icelandic sagas. He may have actually existed. He said to have been the father of three sons who led a vi king invasion of East Anglia in the year eight sixty five and uh and and this is

according to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle and other medieval sources. Now, um, these three sons that go out campaigning are said to have done so in order to perhaps avenge his death or and this is key to make a claim based on one of um of Ragnar's previous invasion attempts, or it could simply all be just a matter of legend, but or some combination of these elements. But the basically most of what we know about him comes from European literature that emerged after his death that maybe some mixture

of legend and history intertwined. Yeah, and ultimately may have been used to either support an invasion, to support military action, or to um, you know, make sense of it afterwards, like why did we do that? Oh? Well, you know what they did to Ragnar. They threw him and fed him to a bunch of snakes. Uh. But but it also touches on something that seems pretty key in the power and spread of this trope, especially in the West, and that is snake pits. Throwing someone into snakes. It's

an evil perpetrated by the enemy, especially a foreign enemy. Now. Danish historian Sexo Grammaticus wrote about this in the in the twelfth century um and Uh, and his his view was at Ragnar had been a ninth century king who battled against Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, and according to Saxo Uh, the Anglo Saxon King a Ella of Northumbria finally captured him and murdered him by casting him into a pit of venomous snakes, and then later Icelandic saga's popularized this tail.

And you have to admit it's both gnarly and the sort of thing that could be used to prop up a revenge invasion. Well, yeah, I mean I think probably the mythic idea of a pit of snakes was cool and appealing for the same reasons back then that it's cool and appealing in movies today. Yeah. Absolutely, It's just it's it's weird and frightening, and then that we seemingly can't quite get enough of it. By the way, one of Ragnar's sons was I've are the boneless? Did he

do an invasion to um? Well, he was one of the suns, Yeah, so he would have, um he I was reading about this. First of all, I think he does show up in some of these TV Viking shows, uh so that anyone out there has has experience with those.

But apparently interpretations range from him just being a man without bones, or a man without legs, or just a man suffering from impotence, or it could be that like the boneless means that he was hated, and it is not anything necessarily about his body, but just his reputation, like there's nothing to him. Yeah. Uh, and there's also sometimes a curse involved in the telling. But I have to say that the idea of a literal boneless Viking

is most intriguing. Uh, that he's just like a big like jelly man that has to be rolled out to the battlefield. I've are the puddle. Yeah uh. But apparently in some of these these uh, these tellings, though, there is this idea that he is boneless, he is no good in an actual fight, perhaps because he is um to some degree disabled, but he was still considered to be a great tactician. Okay, But the core of the legend here is that Ragnar was executed by being thrown

into a snake pit. Yes, and um, I want to read just an example of this from from its from the Guesta Denorum, which of course is a translation here. But he he dies in the ninth book of this particular work. Uh. There are a lot of other snake references elsewhere, because ultimately the snake is just a potent um symbol for us to use in our language. But

but here's the bit about his death. This is after he's been thrown into the pit, For when he had been taken and cast into prison, his guilty limbs were given to serpents to devour, and adders found ghastly substance in the fibers of his entrails. His liver was eaten away, and a snake, like a deadly executioner, beasts at his very heart. Then, in a courageous voice, he recounted all his deeds in order, and at the end of his

recital added the following sentence. If the porkers knew the punishment of the board pig, surely they would break into the sty and hasten to loose him from his affliction. At this saying, ella conjecture that some of his and by his we mean Ragnar's sons were yet alive, and bade that the executioner should stop and the vipers be removed. The servants ran up to accomplish his bidding, but Ragnar

was dead and forestalled the orders of the king. That is good, So he turns into a vegetarian because snakes are eating his liver in his heart. Yeah, the whole part about the snakes going after individual organs is really interesting here, and you see shades of that in other tales as well, which makes me wonder about the idea, like like, ultimately, a snake pit is a place where there are many enemies that can kill you, right, and

here we see them going after individual organs. I wonder if on some level it's this recognition that there are so many ways for a human to die. There's so many ways in which we are mortal, many of them tied up with our individual organs and parts of our bodies and uh, and and and so perhaps that's sort of the the symbolic power of or one part of the symbolic power of the snake pit. Yeah, that's interesting. It also though, because of the special attention given to

the heart, seems pretty clear. But this is just making me think about the number of mythical monsters that are said to attack the liver, in particular that that seems odd like that you would single out the liver in that way. Uh. It makes me think about the eagle, of course, that pecks out Prometheus's liver. It makes me think about I believe it was the Japanese story of the Kappa that dwells in the water and would pull you into the water and then reach up through your

anus to pull your liver out. That's right, Yeah, Why do all these monsters want livers? What? What? What? What's what's the liver got for them? It's almost like it's a loophole, right, It's like, oh, man, death came for me and it got me in the liver. I guess that's probably the story of a lot of you know, stereotypical Viking warriors, right, um, you know, due to the mead um. I should note that in some tellings of

this death, Ragnar is actually laughing before he dies. So I think I think that the whole porker's line is maybe supposed to be funny, like he's kind of cracking a joke about his about the method of his demise there, But I could be wrong on that. Now I read a bit more about this from Tim van Gervanum, who I believe is currently a PhD candidate in Scandinavian History

and Nationalism studies at the University of Amsterdam. Uh He he writes about a lot of stuff about Scandinavian history and culture at scandinavism dot com and uh Tim writes the following quote. There is no archaeological evidence to suggest that snake pits were really constructed on the British Isles in this period, and no other historical sources make mention of such pits being used to execute capital punishment. We have in all likelihood a literary motif on our hands

here which reoccurs in other sagas. And indeed that brings us to our next example, and that is the example of Gunnar or gun Darius or gundahar Um, who is uh the historic king of Burgundy during the early fifth century, but also a minor character in the legends of dragon slayer Siegfried and then ultimately in you know, a part of Wagner's Ring cycle as well, which is based on

these legends. So he fought against Roman forces and Roman allies, but he was defeated in four thirty six by Roman general Flavius Dius Um, whose famed for having stopped a hunting invasion Um previously sometimes referred to as the last victory of the Western Roman Empire. And then in four thirty seven, the year after defeating Um, Gunar uh Idius and Huntish mercenaries, they destroyed Burgundy. They hunt down King Gunnar and they kill him. But how did they kill him? Right?

I think, I think you can guess. There are various poems and sagas that elaborate on all of this, and they often portray Gunnar's murder as a snake power atrocity with the Huns, especially either throwing him into a snake pit or putting him in a snake tower, a snake tower, and in some versions, some versions, I think they just straight up kill him. Okay, he's killed by the snakes.

In other versions he has a harp and he puts the snakes to sleep, so he almost saves himself, but then one of the snakes bites him in the liver and he dies. The liver again, Yeah, once more, the liver. They go right for liver, the snakes once again. Though the question of whether there is any actual historical basis

for this seems to be mostly dismissed. I was reading a work by Suzanne Cries titled Westward I Came across the Sea Anglo Scandinavian History through Scandinavian Eyes, and she writes the question as to whether the snake pit episode has any historical basis, need not detain us here, nor it's similarity to Gunnar's death in a snake pit in Volsunga Saka. Oh so she's just like, it doesn't matter whether the snake pit was real or not, right or it's just like, we're not going through this again with

the whole idea was the actual snake pit. There's obviously not a snake pit. Okay, that makes sense now. I was looking a little bit around about the snake tower itself or the the Schlangan term, and um, apparently there was there was something referred to as the as an historic snake tower in so As, Germany up until the eighteenth century. Um, and I gather this exactly if this, if this actually existed, the idea would be it's a dungeon tower reputed to have a snake pit in it.

I don't think there's any actual argument that this was a real place in Germany, but perhaps the stories get wrapped up around it, and therefore you had an actual location that was referred to as the snake tower. Okay. Now, another interesting example of this we have, of um this

character of Dietrich van Byrne uh So. This is a German legend apparently based in part on the historic uh Theodoric the Great, and in legend and Songs, Dietrich von Byrne encounters various dwarves and dragons and giants and heroes, including Siegfried, and in one adventure he frees a dwarf from a wild man, and the dwarf rewards him with a jewel. And his jewel turns out to be magical, so when an evil giant throws burn into a snake pit, the jewel protects him. Okay, so the jewel does better

than the harp. Yes, yeah, if if you're given the choice between a jewel and a harp, go with the magic dwarf jewel. Now. One of the more interesting papers I came across about snake cowers and snake pits is a work by Alexander H. Craepy from nineteen forty that was published in Scandinavian Studies and Notes titled The Snake Tower. Now. Creepy notes that the European origins of this tale are

almost certainly dramatic. The European origins anyway, um and this is accounts of the snake towers persisted, and he points out that that the problem about the Viking versions of the tale is that uh, no snakes are found in Iceland and Greenland, and that the common viper is the only venomous snake in continental Scandinavia and its bite is

rarely fatal. Furthermore, as one sofas Buggy theorized previously, the origins of this imagined execution method are probably not Germanic in origin at all, and they probably originated in Africa, Asia or India, somewhere where you had just more venomous snakes to inform the legend, to inform this idea of throwing people to snakes and and for their death. You know, so so creepy spends a lot of time. I'm not gonna be able to go over all the things he

discusses here. Um, but he ultimately points out you have two types of snake pit stories. Stories in which snakes are mere details to illustrate the danger, wildness, or uncleanliness of a pit or a place, and then stories in which they are stroll to the torment and or death that the pit or tower offers. Now on the former, he mentions, um uh, some French Authorian legends that that utilized this, as well as variations on the Jewish legend of Joseph being lowered into the pit in which there

are said to be snakes there. Not that the snakes are trying to eat Joseph, but just hey, what a loathsome awful place. There were also snakes there. Oh, I see when Joseph Joseph of Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcode fire from the Book of Genesis, when he falls into a pit or I think maybe it's thrown into a pit by his brothers. Yeah, if there's snakes down there, it's just all the word like, let's like, let's let's ham it up a little bit, you know, let's get

some snakes in there. It's like this was a bad pit, folks. Yeah. As far as the other type of story go, where there was a snake is central um creepy recounts tales from Macedonia and Romania in which you have like a single giant lizard or snake that dwells in a tower and then. But there are plenty of examples of stories in which it's multiple snakes that are and often venomous

snakes that are the foil. There are tales of Romans using a cage and vipers to execute a prisoner, and there are some tellings of the of st Irene and which she is thrown into a pit of vipers, but then is protected not by a dwarf jewel, but by an angel of the Lord. And then there are also accounts in the Hindu traditions of such torments and trials

as well. By the way, coming back to Conan the Barbarian, which of course is filled with snakes, we have a Tower of the Serpent in that film that Conan the Barbarian and his fellow thieves break into. Oh yeah, and Conan gets in trouble because it doesn't he cut the snake's head off. He does, Yeah, falso dooms pet snake.

One of the interesting things about that is like I instantly thought of that, and I'm like, oh, man, that that story that that that was really on the money, right, But when you look closer, uh, that sequence was apparently based on the Roberty Howard's story The Tower of the Lent, in which Conan meets an imprisoned elephant human hybrid, a quote trans cosmic being, which itself seems like a weird fiction era twist on the Hindu god Ganesha. So Um.

I don't know it's it's ultimately different, but also not unrelated, perhaps to this idea of um of of ideas and symbols from outside of a culture than taking on a new twist within a new culture. So Creepy ultimately argues for African, Indian or Asian origins of the trope and uh as, these would be first of all, places where you would have just more venomous snakes and just well

known venomous snakes that could be found. And that also he argues that all things being equal, this is not an entirely unbelievable, thankful thing for a tire end or a despot to do. After all, cruel kings have been known or at least been reputed to do much worse. Yeah. And and we know, for example, like the Roman Empire did in fact throw people to animals of various kinds

to kill them. Yeah, So I have to say, um, Creepy did at times there were there was kind of this air of like, well, you know, rulers and other parts of the world are awful. This is the kind of thing they get up to. So we also have to consider like the the age of this paper, I think, And he also points out that you know, at the

same time, none of these tales exist in isolation. The snake takes on other connotations and plays other roles in myth cycles, such as particularly the venom dripping, dripping snake that's used to torment the Norse god Loki at one point. Oh that's right, Yeah, yeah, there's some This is a

frequent subject of paintings. You'll find some really remarkable paintings of this torment and h. He also adds that there's a whole tradition in medieval Europe of Hell being populated with snakes, So a real life snake pit uh is, to a certain extents, just a variation on that or, he argues, could have helped inform that idea. So at any rate, his his his final argument is that this is a central part of stories from outside of your

Europe that then are transplanted into Europe. They're just too uh, you know, irresistible, and then they get wound up in German legends, and then that travels to Scandinavia as well, and that's how we end up with Vikings being consumed by venomous serpents. Interesting, but so, even even after his survey, that is still just an inference on his part. Ultimately, we don't know where these ideas came from, why they show up in these stories. Yeah, and I didn't. I

was looking around. I was hoping to find some more recent scholarship on this, um, but I did not come across it. Not to say it does not exist. But if I did miss it, I hope to find it because we can. We can always discuss it later. But um, but yeah, this is ultimately just his argument. We don't know for sure. All right. On that note, we're going

to take another break. But when we come back, we're gonna leave mostly leave the fiction and the mythology behind us, and we're gonna get back into the science of actual snake pits. Thank all right, we're back. So, um, you know, I guess one might ultimately think of two different varieties of snake pits. Here snake pits that are built in stocked by human beings for probably you know, not so

kind purposes. And then there are snake dens, where snakes gather for reasons that have nothing to do with eating Germans or vikings. And we're gonna start by diving into one of, if not the most impressive natural world snake dens that you'll encounter. But but I do want to point out that this sort of behavior that we're discussing here, the use of wintering or hibernation dens, this also does occur in some European species as well, the European adder,

for example. So I think that's something to keep in mind perhaps when thinking about some of those the legend cycles that we mentioned earlier, is that the idea of snakes gathering together underground would not have been the sort of thing that would be entirely from from the world afar.

You know, it's the kind of thing that they could conceivably have tails about, like oh, well, you know, uh, you know, Igmar once stepped in a hole and there was a there are a bunch of snakes in there was scary and in fact, the the northerly climate might give one particular reason that someone could find a bunch of snakes in a natural gathering in a pit, maybe a reason that you would not expect to find driving snakes into a den in more tropical regions, where you

might expect to find more species of snakes and more venomous snakes, for example. So I want to start with one of my sources here, which is an article from The New York Times published June sixteenth, nineteen by Ian Austin, which is about the Narciss snake dens. So we're starting here in the Canadian province of Manitoba, in what's known as the Interlake Regions. So this is going to be between the large inland lakes in Manitoba, between Lake Winnipeg

and Lake Manitoba. And there is a tiny settlement along the highway I think it's Highway seventeen that runs north south through Manitoba called Narciss. The some sources called a town. I think town might be kind of a misleading word because I looked it up on Google street View and there's not much there. It seems like there are a handful of houses, but that's about it. Austin notes that one of the most prominent features of the town that you can see from the highway is a long abandoned

gas station. But just a few kilometers north of Narciss along the highway, there is this unique place with an astonishing distinction to its name, and that is that it's probably the world's most concentrated and most mind rending natural

snake pits. Technically, I know what we've been saying pits through this whole episode, but I think as best we can we should maybe from here on out try to relegate pits to uh two pits created by humans, because apparently the the the naturalists and zoologists who deal with this place prefer the term snake dens. A pit kind of has negative connotations. Yeah, pit, A pit is something you throw something or someone into, and these are these are homes. You don't call it like a bare pit.

I guess, well, I mean that's side the point. Well, you would if you threw somebody into it, Yeah, true, true, Yeah, the pit implies that someone or something is going in there with the snakes. Yeah, so these are snake dens. According to Professor Robert T. Mason, who is a professor of integrative biology at Oregon State University, quote, it is

likely the biggest concentration of snakes in the world. And I was thinking about that, like, why here, why here so far north in Canada, that does not seem like the kind of place you would expect to find the biggest concentration of snakes in the world. And there is an answer to that question. But we'll have to come

back to that in just a minute. First, I want to discuss exactly what you would see if you were to decide to visit these snake dens north of narciss So there are four major dens in the area, which I believe you can look at from viewing platforms, at least some of them, I think maybe all four and all war dens are found in sinkholes down in the ground. Austin describes one of them like this quote. About the size of a large dining room and ten to fifteen

feet deep. The den initially appears to be covered with some kind of green vegetation, but as it moves, it immediately becomes apparent it is filled with slithering snakes, most about the diameter of a marker, and with the largest perhaps up to eighteen inches long, which would be about forty six centimeters. So here's your that's no moon moment,

instead of that's no moon, it's those aren't plants. This is the sort of scene that I think most cinematic snake pit sequences have have tried and failed to achieve, and that Raiders mostly achieves this idea that the floor is snakes, Yes, but it gets even cooler. Okay, so you're picturing that, you're picturing the pit. Maybe you're looking down from the observation deck. There's this pit in the ground size of a room. It's covered in snakes, just

filled with snakes. And now there's there's also a sound you should imagine going along with it. The snakes and the den's here do not produce sounds you would normally think of as going with snakes. They don't hiss, they don't rattle. Uh, they don't even growl like a king cobra actually does. But there is a sound that is

apparently produced just from friction. Uh Ian writes, quote from the sheer number of them rubbing against each other and the bottom of the den creates a sound, and Austin quotes a visitor named Brian's Sistric who tries to describe the sound by saying that it was like quote the wind rustling through the trees, but louder. Oh that's nice. This again gets back to this idea that we discussed earlier, that snake sounds, or a lot of with a lot of animals, like the sounds that we associate with them,

particularly through um A pictures are not always all that accurate. Um. Like, just on the subject that you mentioned, rattling is not as sound that they're not making. But if you've ever gotten to hear a rattlesnake in real life, there's kind of a range of sound that occur and create. Um,

it's not just that cinematic rattlesnake sound. If you hear one in real life, you may be very surprised that it does not produce a guitar or ban joe string twang right after the rattle finishes, you know, like, have you ever heard a rattle in a movie without a bam bram anyway? Okay, so these snakes that are filling the din and forming a kind of floor of writhing spaghetti, and they are making this sound like wind rustling through

the trees. Uh. These are garter snakes, specifically the subspecies them no Fue sertalis parieh talis, which is a subspecies also known as red sided garter snakes. Now, garter snakes are very common in North America. If you live in North America, I would not be surprised at all if

you have encountered the multiple times in your lives. There are different coloration patterns that you'll find among the different subspecies, but most of them tend to have black or dark green background color, and then three brighter stripes running down the length of the body, usually either yellow or bright green. Beyond that, different subspecies also have different spots or splotches of color. Some have red, some have blue, some more

kind of checked. So unless you're an expert, you're probably not gonna always be able to tell whether you're looking at a garter snake or not. They are usually considered non venomous, meaning that you know they don't have a venom that is thought of as significant to humans, though apparently some subspecies do have mild neurotoxins in their saliva, which can help immobilize a tiny prey animal while the

snake tries to get the animal down its gullet. But but the most I've read about in terms of garter snake venum affecting humans is is mostly just like itching

or irritation at the side of a bite. Red sided garter snakes in particular are found throughout much of central and the western United States and Canada, and according to the conservation group Ontario Nature, they travel farther north than any other land dwelling reptile in Canada, and so they're they're sort of out on the climatic edge, right, which

has some pluses and minuses. Of course, it probably means that in the far north, I would guess they face less competition for resources from other animals like them, but of course they're also going to be extremely vulnerable to the cold further south in in warmer climates, Apparently, garter snakes have to seek one another for mating with the help of sexual pheromones. So this would be like a female produces a pheromone that is uh, and the males

are chemo sensitive to it. They smell that pheromone and then they seek out the female to mate with. But seeking a maid in this way is energetically tagg xing at a time when you could just be hunting for food, right, you could be stalking up, but instead you're running around through the marshes or the woods trying to find a mate. So up north, where garter snakes have together in dens to survive the winter, there's actually kind of a double

advantage to this conclave at the den. With all the snakes gathered in one place, it's much easier to find a mate now even exactly, it's like they've all gathered at one big snake convention anyway, right, it's already they're already at a burning snake right right now. There are two parts of the year when you can see the snakes on mass at the den's north of narciss In the fall, usually around early September. That's when they tend to gather at the dens. So they've been coming in

from kilometers all around, from from the marshes and the woods. Uh, and then they come into the dens. I believe the technical term for the dens are actually hypernacular. That's a good one to have in your tool belt there. Oh yeah, really hitting so many great metal band names in this from Snake Tower and it's a German translation to hybernacular, like these are some great great names for your bands, right,

count hybernacular. Uh. And another word actually that that is worth knowing is that the cold blooded animal equivalent of hibernation, because I believe technically reptiles don't hibernate. The term is known as broomation. And this means, of course, you know, they descend at the onset of cold weather and then in the spring, there's a period of like one to three weeks or so when they emerge from the hybernacular to form these massive writhing pits containing hundreds or sometimes

even thousands of snakes at a time. All in all, about seventy thousand snakes can be found gathered at this one collection of dens for the winter. Now what are they doing when they're gone for the summer? Well, during warm weather time, they're mostly foraging. The garter snakes are going to be eating small amphibians like frogs, as well

as leeches, earthworms, fishes, and other small animals. But in the times when they gather, I believe, especially in the springtime, these huge slithering pits in the dens, I guess I said pits, But yeah, what do you call them? These huge slithering masses of snakes in the dens are all about mating because in the springtime, when the weather warms up,

the males emerge first. They come out of the hybernacular first, and they warm up in the sun and become more active as they slowly come out of broomation, and they're waiting for the larger females to emerge so the mating can begin. And when it does. One of the strange things that that goes on here is that it is

an extremely asymmetrical affair. Each female snake can be surrounded by dozens of males, all vying to be the one that mates with her, and these masses of snakes gathered around a single adult female can form into what's known as a mating ball, where they all get tangled up and can sometimes even sort of roll downhill. See already,

it's weirder than any North myth. Yeah. Now, regarding these giant masses of mating snakes in springtime, in the New York Times article, Austin notes that since this emergence is usually in April or May many years, a trip to the snake Den's is a popular local Mother's Day celebration. Oh wow, okay, sounds great. Um. Now, these garter snakes, I think I've sort of mentioned this already, but they're

considered pretty much entirely harmless to humans. I've seen videos of kids holding them in their hands and playing with them that I'm not personally saying this is advised. I would, you know, I would say follow whatever the local posted

rules say. Apparently they can sometimes bite and sometimes garter snakes will also secrete a kind of nasty, stinky pheromone juice out of a gland near their cloaca out of defense, and apparently, according to Robert Mason, that biologist quoted earlier in the article I mentioned earlier, this defensive emission of malodorous repellent is actually part of the mating behavior as well, because it looks like what's going on is that when the males surround the female and the mating ball, this

kind of irritates her, and the female opens up this repellent gland in order to to spray the stink pheromone that would normally repel something that's harassing the snake. But then the opening of the gland also gives the males access for at least for at least one of them

to mate with her. And another interesting thing about garter snakes is that, like some species we've discussed before, after mating, females can engage in long term storage of sperm from multiple males, allowing competition between sex cells within the female's body and potentially leading to her producing broods with multiple paternity. So multiple males can have can have offspring within the

same brood. Interesting In that Times article, Austin reports that the park does permit people to handle the smaller male snakes, but discourages people from trying to handle the larger females. And I was wondering, what does it feel like to

hold one of these snakes. Well, that's actually covered. Austin says that a couple of and their children here at the at the Den's reported that snakes don't feel slimy, they don't feel scaly, and that the sensation is quote more like holding a piece of soft mo hair that

wiggles around. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean I always encourage the touching of snakes when the touching of snakes is permitted and encouraged by responsible parties, because yeah, I find that, Yeah, they certainly they don't feel slimy, but they really they feel nice. They feel there's something reassuring about them. Yeah. That visitor Brian so Strict is quoted in the article is saying that they just quote kind of melt into your hand. So it seems like if you threw somebody

into this snake pit, it wouldn't be that bad. Well, the thing is, snakes don't they don't want you in there with them, it might be bad for the snakes. Yeah yeah, um but but but back to the question I brought up here earlier, Why here, Why in Narciss. Well, so the answer is in Manitoba. Of course, it gets extremely cold in the winter, and snakes are cold blooded. They can't tolerate the extreme cold of the Canadian winter, and that's why they have to go into broomation in

these dens. And the reason the interlake region around Narciss is so attractive is the quality of its sink holes. This area is mostly a very thin layer of top soil above a limestone bedrock, which is easily eroded by water flowing over and underground, and this creates sink holes which grant access to small caves and underground recesses that fall below the frost line, providing a relatively warm refuge

in winter. So it's geology. The snakes swarm in from the surrounding area because of the quality of the natural snake holes that form here. Come for the sinkholes, stay for the snake sex. I couldn't have put it better myself that that's exactly how it is. Um and Austin points out that it's the same geologic qualities that make narciss and idea old spot for snake dens that also make it a bad spot for agriculture, which is why

most attempted farmers eventually left the region. And according to Austin, early European settlers in the area tried to exterminate the snakes, but fortunately, it seems local attitudes are are a bit more appreciative these days. And I was reading how there are now even special sort of accommodations in the area, like snake tunnels that pass underneath local roads to prevent

you know, auto related flattenings during the migration season. And I've got to say, I guess it's because I grew up in Tennessee around a lot of Eastern garter snakes. You know, if you saw a snake in my hometown, it was very likely a garter snake, a different subspecies, but still a garter snake. I think I've always thought of them as fairly mundane animals, but I am seeing garter snakes in a whole new way. And there are

other things about them that make things even weirder. Like um we mentioned earlier how snakes in general are mostly solitary predators, and these large gatherings for hibernation, of course, or one exception to that. But there is another interesting anomaly. I was reading a news article in Science by Elizabeth Panissi called garter snakes are surprisingly social, forming quote friendships

with fellow serpents. Now friendships is in sort of scare quotes there, and I think that that word choice might be a little over the line if you take it too literally, But either way, these findings are actually kind of interesting. So this article was from May, it's pretty recent, and it covers how there was research into eastern garter snakes. Again that's different from the red sided garter snakes that

you'd find in Manitoba. But the short version is that a couple of researchers from Wilfrid Lauria University named Noah

Miller and Morgan Skinner. Uh. They found that if you put a bunch of snakes in an enclosure and then you chart their movements, and then you take them out, and then you clean the enclosure to get rid of any smells, and then you put them back in and different positions, the snakes will kind of tend to reform groups in little artificial shelters with the same snakes that they had grouped with previously, and they also found interesting

little indications of semisocial behaviors among snakes. For example, quote, when the snakes were in a group, they tended to do what the group did, regardless of their own personality. Overall, snakes spent about nine percent of the time in a shelter. Animals with more snakes in their shelter were less likely to leave. Now. They noted, of course, that these results

might not hold true in the wild. This could be some kind of product that we're not understanding, some some element of the design and the experiment causing them to behave differently. So field research would need to be done to confirm this effect. But wouldn't that be interesting? You know, It's like, oh, hey, I was in a mating ball with you last spring. How are you doing? Yeah, that this is all fascinating because again, we think of snakes

as dainly solitary predators. We don't tend to think that they have much in the way of really aationships with each other beyond you know, birth and then of course, in some cases preying on other snakes. But but yeah, this is we see this with these garter snakes. But we also see some similar stuff going on with rattlers. Oh this brings us back to true grit. Yeah, yeah, because of course, in true grit, like we said, UH, we have this scene in which there is this uh,

this den. It's a man made den, you know, in the sense there wasn't made for snakes, but it's you know, an abandoned mine, and snakes have turned it into their den. And we do certainly see this in for instance, the northwestern United States. We see this with UH, with with the rattlers. They're taking into two communal dens to survive the winter and then emerging in the spring basking for a while and the heat in the sun to have a recharge, and then they go they go their own

ways to forage and the mate. UH. And interestingly enough, female timber rattlesnakes do seem to maintain some sort of bond with relatives beyond birth. So pregnant females have been found living with either UH sisters or mother daughter daughter pairs. And part of this seems to come down to UH, like we said earlier, you know, the chemical traits that are left by other snakes, in this case by the rattlesnakes. They can follow these back to wintering dens, but they

can also use them to identify close relatives. Now, continuing discussing of rattlesnakes. Here, we talked about mythic artificial pits of snakes, and we've talked about these these dens that snakes are taking to naturally. Uh. Well, there's definitely an artificial rattlesnake pit uh to consider, and that's uh well, those are the pits that take place in um rattlesnake round ups, which are an annual affair in Texas. So this sort of thing uh one place in particular Sweetwater, Texas.

I've seen multiple they're multiple pay uh news articles about this practice, including April NBR report by Lizzie Chenu. And basically this is something goes out about half a century uh local regularly round up Western diamondback rattlesnakes with the aim of keeping or the The claim is that it's about keeping the populations in check and protecting livestock and pets from venomous bites. So it's very tied to farming

and agriculture. Chen writes, quote, on average, four thousand pounds of snakes are rounded up every year where they are weighed, sexed, meaning they're identified as male or female, milked, killed, and skinned. Uh So, obviously this has been heavily criticized by ecologist and animal rights activists, though interestingly enough, the proponents of

these rattlesnake roundups. They often use it as a defense, Well, we're not really putting much of a dent in there in the rattlesnake population, which raises the issue then then why are we doing it? Right? It's like, what what is the purpose of of continuing to round them up and kill them if it's not actually doing the thing

that it's supposed to do right. Um. Part of the issue that I've read is that it has to do with the fact that this this generates a lot of revenue for the area, like like a lot of things of this nature. It's you know, there's a whole festival um, kind of built up around it. So it brings you know, gets people out, it gets people spending money, um. And it seems uncertain if it is actually serving as a

protective service at all. So again, is it is garnered a lot of criticism over time, Plus, rattlesnakes play an important role in the ecosystem. We discussed this um on an episode that we did with with guest Mark Mandinka. Uh. You know, rattlesnakes in particular, they're gonna prey on disease carrying rodents. Uh, They're gonna help keep their numbers down, and they're going to serve as necessary prey for a host of animals, including owls, foxes, coyotes, and other snake species.

And then on top of this, there even these rattlesnakes, which you know often have that kind of you know, Western danger reputation, They're not as dangerous to humans as those films would make you think for starters. We've we've certainly discussed this before. Snake venom is a precious resource that most snakes are loath to waste on the average

cowboy or a captured germatic king. In fact, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife, first of all, about seven thousand people are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States annually, and only point two percent one out of five hundred hundred venomous snake bites result in death, and on average, only one to two people in Texas die each year from venomous snake bites. Roughly half of all venomous snake bites are dry. In other words, the snake does not

inject venom into the victim. Yeah, I mean, I can certainly understand local cultural traditions and all that, but I do think obviously you're always kind of playing with fire when you're culling predators, right, I mean, we've seen this go wrong in a number of locations, just in the continental United States. Absolutely. It just brings about, you know, an unbalanced ecosystem which can result and and catastrophic consequences, sometimes in ways that you can't even quite predict ahead

of time. It also brings to mind, uh an episode we did in the past about bounties being placed on cobras. Do you remember that? Right? Oh? Yeah, that makes me wonder Okay, Well, I mean I guess I could understand this in a different way of somebody was like farming rattlesnakes in order to bring in But that would be a somewhat different thing, wouldn't it. Yeah. So anyway, the story of of in the future of rattlesnake roundups continues

to be written. But but I think it first of all, it serves as just an example of a modern activity that is essentially resulting in temporary snake pits, because the pictures are pretty pretty snake heavy. But on the other hand, it's a it's a reason to drive home again the importance of snakes. Even though so much of this, uh you know we've been talking about, especially in the myths and the cinematic examples. Uh, you know, they're they're they're preying on our fear of snakes and our ideas the

snakes are just inherently dangerous or lethal to humans. And really we have to step back and appreciate what snakes are and how they fit into our ecosystem. So I guess what I'm trying to say is watch out for snakes, but be respectful of snakes. Yeah, leave the snakes alone, all right. So there you have it. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone out there regarding snake movies, uh, snake myths and legends, and also, you know, perhaps most importantly,

real life encounters with snakes and snake dens. Have you seen these snake dens in question? I know we have Canadian listeners. If you have, if you have witnessed this spectacle in real life, we have to hear from you. I know some of you out there have been to the narciss Snake Dens. We want to hear from you. Let us know what was it like. What did you

hear the sound? Tell us about the friction. Yes. In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, well you know where to find us. It's wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. Just make sure that you rate, review and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to

our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to tell us about your snaked in experience, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact and Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.