Oh No, Snakes!

wasn't quite a big of a joke. But think earlier in his career, like Kurt Russell didn't even have friends. He was like such a squeaky clean Walt Disney movie kid, like all the all the normal kids hated him. Said yeah, like he was just known as like this just can't do anything wrong, like like squeaky clean kid. Well, that was my first R rated movie. Was Escaped from New York. Yeah, yeah, can you dig it? No? That was The Warriors. Yeah, no, I remember I called what it was on, like HBO

or something. It wasn't even in the theater, and I called my mom to ask her if it was that's how good of a boy that I was. You're like Kurt Russell. Yeah, sure, I know you're by yourself because you don't have any friends. Go ahead and watch that's funny. Yeah, man alive. That's a good snake story. You know that has nothing to do with snakes per se. Oh I've got a good snake story for later. Oh well, I was gonna say lay it on est, but we'll wait. Yeah,

I'm teasing that one. We'll wait patiently. All of you who suffer from a little something called, oh video phobia, you can go ahead and skip this one because it's gonna creep you out. I'm not afraid of snakes, and I'm still creeped out by some parts of this because we're gonna get like down and dirty with snakes. Well, here's my deal, and I think we should say this as a public service. I get reaped out by snakes initially, and then I'm like, Okay, it's just a snake. But um,

snakes are vilified and killed when they shouldn't be killed. Yeah, because people are scared of them and that ain't cool. Years and years ago and the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, where I learned ninety percent of the stuff that I know. Um, I read about a study of the snakes, like people took a fake snake and put it in the road and then like hid behind some bushes and that's what people did. And allegedly people would run over the snake

and then back up and run over it again. And yeah, according to the well according to Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. But um yeah, I think people go out of their way to kill snakes. Yeah. I know camps on campers who like that they're hiking will kill a snake if they see it. Um bad campers. Yeah, that's not good, especially considering only like five percent of snake species are venomous and um, so it's pretty rare to come across a venomous snake. Uh. There are some out there that

will hurt you pretty bad, and we'll talk about those. Um. But for the most part, most snakes either kill their prey by constricting or swallowing you whole while you're alive. You're too big for most snakes to really take on, so they're not gonna mess with you. Sure, but it is there is a You can't really fault people necessarily, although you and I both do for just killing snakes.

Wantonly and indiscriminately. Um, because the study after study has found that we are really, there's no other explanation, evolutionarily primed to fear and notice snakes in our environment. Yeah, you found that cool article. And I've seen this before that um is unpopular science. Yeah, they've done studies that showed that people are more apt because of we evolve to not want to get killed by snakes, to see snakes and like our peripheral visi and than almost anything else. Yeah,

even spiders, which people are creeped out by. Yeah. Well, and also spiders are deadly too, so it would make sense that over time, the people who were best at recognizing spiders and getting away from them would live longer to pass on their genes, and so through natural selection, that would be the case supposedly. Um, the same thing happened with snakes. But we are even better at recognizing snakes than spiders snake detection theory. Yeah. Pretty good band

name it is. It's been a while since we had a good band name. It's definitely one of them. I just saw that on T shirt and a marquee simultaneously. That means that's a good band name. So if you want to know more about that whole study. You can read about I think it was in the Lantern in

two thousand and ten. Or basically, it's like, yes, we can find a snake just about anywhere, even in our peripheral vision, and we are scared of snakes, and rightfully so, Yeah, I know, I feel like I'm primed when I'm camping and hiking, just I'm just always sort of on the lookout. I'm never just like daydreaming and walking. I'm always looking

at the ground. And that's smart, man, because they will lay right across the trail and that they they're not looking out for you, so you stumble upon them, and that's when an accident might happen. Yeah, the problem is

with snakes, you're looking at the ground. You better be looking up to Like, if you're in the Amazon, a lot of boa constrictors dangle from trees and then like drop themselves down onto their prey, which includes monkeys, of which you, my friend, are one's right, you know, So if you had a boa constrictor that was feeling kind

of froggy, they might come at you. Or those flying snakes that obviously cannot fly, but they glide down quite a way is in Sri Lanka, right, Yeah, if you've seen these videos, Um, they leap from a tree and start squiggling, and then they flatten their body out and they can go a long way from where they started, and it's not straight down, you know what I'm saying. So let's just re read, rephrase all this, let's restay it. You and I disagree with killing snakes indiscriminately. It's just wrong.

But there is a healthy and understandable preternatural human fear of snakes, actually just natural human fear. Yea. Even Darwin wrote about it. Oh yeah, he tried to do that test. Remember, like, I'm not gonna jump when the snake jumps at me, and he's like, keep jumping, and he's basically like it's human instinct. Alright. So shall we start with snakes in general in earnest if they've been around a lot longer

than we have. Yeah, there are twenty seven hundred known species of this reptile, and um, one thing you'll find in common with all of them is they all have no limbs. That's something they can't wear a vest. I can't wear vests because there's nowhere to put their thumbs right, or there's no thumbs to put in the vest. No arms. Oh but I thought you meant just like you gotta have the thumbs in the vest too. Well, sure you gotta, but I mean you have arms for to have the thumbs.

That's from pe big adventure. Oh see, I just trampled all over that thing. Um. They are carnivores means they meet they eat meat. Um yeah, well, which includes you, It includes meets. I'm just a big monkey. And they're cold blooded. They're ectothermic, which means their inner temperature varies, uh, along with where they are. It fluctuates depending on how hotter cold it is. And that's all snakes. And apparently they tend to thrive. Um, well, all ectothermic animals tend

to thrive and get bigger in warm or climates too. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, which is why the biggest snakes you're gonna find are in the tropics near the equator. Uh. If you think they look like legless lizards, it's because they sort of are there from the same order, which is Squamata, And then there are a couple of sub orders sorry for lizards and Serpentus for snakes or phidia, which is where the phobia comes from, pobia, which is

the fear of snakes like serpentus better yes, orpentaphobias. Ways, it just makes sense. Sure. Um. If you look at a picture of a snake, which we have on this article, there are some pretty good graphics. Uh. If you look at their body, it's pretty neat because even though they look funny, they are not so different from us. They have bones, and they have organs, and they have a skull and a brain and their vertebrates. Yeah, it's all just sort of squished in that long body such that

it all sort of fits next to each other. Right. The thing is, although they have like some the same senses that we have. I noticed I'm making sounds more than usual unconsciously in this episode, but subconscious exactly. They have the same senses that we have in much the same way, but they're um adjusted slightly differently like snakes. They don't have ears. Anybody who's ever looked at a snake would flip out if you saw one with ears. Um, But they do have the ability to hear. They just

have um. The sides of their skull have little um specialized bones that the skin covers sound vibrations hit the skin, it's transferred to the bone and that transfers to uh an auditory nerve where the brain processes it and says it's jack rabbit and I'm hungry, exactly going that way. Um. Site they do not see in color, and depending on the snake's environment and where they how they live their life, basically, um,

their eyes are going to be quite different. Um. There are rods that have a low light uh distinguishing It's like I sort of get the sense that it's like the fuzzy, fuzzy looking shapes and things not super crystal clear. Yeah. Like, Um, that that camera trick they always use when somebody's coming out of anesthesia in the hospital blinks that. That is probably one of the types of site the cones produced

the clear images. And Um, if a snake like lives in a cave in the dark for most of its life, it's not gonna need that awesome vision, It's gonna just have like that light and dark sense. If a snake lives above ground does all of its hunting above ground,

they have a really good vision and great depth perception. Yeah, and can actually like adjust the focus from you know, far away to near very easily, and they actually can see some color really just not like anything in the range that we can see, but they do have the spectacular extra vision, yes, and for red stuff. Yeah. So basically, if you seem predator snakes see you like that. Some

snakes do. Snake species, especially ones that live above ground, because they are frequently nocturnal and they hunt warm blooded animals, So they have basically little thermal imaging cameras that are on top of their normal vision. Yeah, and I think that helps their periphery a little bit as well, Like they'll just see like something hot next to me, what snake is eating that monkey? You know? They make that noise too, That was a great noise. Uh. And then

we'll round out the senses with smell um. They have little nasal openings and they have little olfactory chamber to process that stuff. And they also have tongues which are not there to taste because they don't have a sense of taste, which is yeah, they're just there to eat, not to enjoy it. Yeah, so they'll like swallow a pick hoole and just be like, how was that. I don't know, I don't have a sense of taste. I'm full, But they do. They do flick their tongue, as anybody knows,

and it's one of the defining characteristics of snakes. But what they're doing is gathering odorance out of the air and delivering them to these little scent glands or scent organs called Jacobson's glands Jacobson's organs and um. The thing is basically hooked up to a secondary old factory nerve that further interprets the air. Yes, sent, so I get the feeling that smell. They're pretty pretty good at smelling. Yeah,

two times over. That's um. Then they have their digestive tract, which is going to run all along the length of the body. Um, I'm telling you, look at this graphic. It's really kind of spells it out. Everything is just elongated. It's a good died in the wool how stuff works. Illustration Agreed. So you've got these, uh you know, you've got your mouth, the esophagus, the stomach, small and large intestines. You've got an anus, it's all stretched along the whole

length of the body, right exactly. You've got a trachea. You've got lungs, at least one lung some snakes up two. Some even have a third. Yeah, and that's weird because um, I mean it makes sense if they would have three. If they just have one, that's odd to me. The reason it's odd is because when snakes are digesting their food, their metabolic rate increases because they're often eating things that

can be fifty of their body weights. And when you're eating something that large and swallowing a whole, you're metabolic rate goes into high gear. And you also need to produce a lot more digestive fluids than you normally would, so their oxygen consumption can increase by up to like a hundred times. So you would think that they would have like fifteen lungs, but apparently some of them just

have the one. But what is even more interesting, Chuck, is when you have a like a whole rabbit just in your mouth is completely full of a rabbit, you still need to breathe, so they the snakes can actually extend their tricky and they're breathing tube out of their mouth from underneath their prey. Basically like um, one of those like wildly coyote cartoons where I don't know if he ever did, but bugs bunny definitely. Did you just grab like a reed and use it as a straw

from underwater? We'll imagine that if bugs anywhere in the snake's mouth, and that read was coming out from underneath them. That's the analogy I was going for. Uh. They also don't have a dire frame, which is pretty interesting. They breathed by widening and narrowing their rib cage, literally creating a vacuum, pushing air in and sucking air, pushing her out and sucking air back in, and between each of

these cycles they actually stopped. They have an apnea that occurs where they don't breathe at all, and sometimes it's a few seconds, sometimes it's a few minutes. But um, that's how they breathe. It's crazy and cool. So I'm I'm pretty much enthralled by now with snakes. I'm not creeped out yet. We haven't really reached the creepy parts. We'll get to those starting after we get back from this break. Chuck. Yes, you have the ability to shed

dead skin cells pretty much constantly. It's always they're always sloughing off. Yeah, we had a great episode on that we did what was it a skin right? Yeah, but also did it come up? And does your body regenerate itself every seven years or something? You're constantly doing that with skin cells. Snakes um shed their skin as well, but they do it in a completely different technique, and they mold. They actually shed their whole outer layers skin

every once in a while. Yeah. Sometimes you'll see that in the woods and you'll think, oh, well, there was a snake and now he's not here, but here's his hollow body or hollow skin. Um. So what they have is have an elastic skin that attaches to muscles, and then the scales are made of keratin, the same thing that our fingernails are made from. And those actually they the number of scales have doesn't change or the pattern as they grow. I guess the scales just get larger. Yeah,

and they they replace themselves over time. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Yeah. So um, when the outer skin of the snakes starts to get kind of worn down and banged up, the snake says it's time for some new ones. So they start reproducing skin cells. But almost these um specialized skin cells between their outer skin and their inner skin, and those things form this layer between the two and they liquefy,

which helps kind of. Well, first it makes the outer skin a little more um shed doble, softens it up, but it also like separates it from the snake itself, so they can eventually slide out of it. And it gets to a point where it starts like rubbing its chin against a rock like a kitty cat. Yeah, and like um and like right and like uh, it ends up degloving its whole body. Basically, Man, you love that word. It's a great descript it is. And it turns out

and we'll see this as we progress here. But snakes use rocks and things a lot because they don't have limbs, and so they'll rub up against that thing, like you said, and just peel it off and just keep going until the skin's all gone. And they're like, I got a new suit, check it out, check out my bow tie, and I just have to do this again. How often? Well it depends, this article said, Um, it can happen anywhere from it can start again a few days later, a few months later, a few days later. What a

useless species of snake that must be. Like all they do is mold the whole time. Yeah, Because it takes about two weeks to complete the molting process, So that surprised me. They're consumed by the quest for looking young. Yeah, maybe that's what it is. Um a few months later makes a little more sense to me. But and I think it could have been too on how banged up they get, Like maybe they're forced the molt a few days later, because it's something like a Steve McQueen snake

would probably mold a lot um aches. Uh. They grow their entire life, which is another great fact to me, maybe the best one of the show, but that they indeterminate growth. Yeah, they never stopped growing. No, they can just keep growing and growing. Again, it depends on like how ample their food supply is, what the ambient temperature is in their environment. But they can just keep on growing. Yeah, this slows down, they don't grow at the same rate,

but once they reach maturity, they keep on growing. They can live anywhere from four to years depending on the species, and probably more than that or less depending on the hazards in the area. Yes, like people with machetes exactly. All right, are we to the part? And this I think is what creeps people out a little bit. It's how snakes move that's definitely probably the creepiest part about it.

It's one of them. See, I think it's amazing. It is slightly disconcerting to see because you're used to things with legs and arms, but when you see that slithering motion, it definitely like I think for most people it's just a little bit of a yeah, you know, but if you stop and look at it, you're like, wow, they really have that down path. Yeah, it's a wonder of nature. And there there. Snakes are able to locomote um. Because

there we said they're vertebrates. Their bodies are made up of scores and scores and hundreds depending on the size and type of the snake, of um tiny vertebrae that are attached to pairs of ribs and it goes all throughout the snake's body. And basically each of these is a point at which the snake can contort itself. You've got a bunch of these working together in tandem. The snake can propel itself forward using a number of different techniques. They also have what amounts to on their bellies on

their underside, basically tire tread ventral scales. It's pretty neat and those are used to just uh, I get the feeling. They just grip on whatever it can grip on and help it along. So there's four main ways that a snake propels itself along. The one that um, I think most is most popular among snakes these days is the serpentine motion. The serpentine motion, Yeah, the classic s shape

also known as undulatory locomotion. And basically the net contracts its muscles and it the body is thrust from side to side and um, it says I'm going, I'm going, and the snake just takes off like a rocket. Yeah. And this can be in on in water or on land. If you've ever been in a lake and seen a snake, uh, swimming across the water, that'll get you going quick because those things move really quick in the water. Um. And a lot of water snakes are poisonous for sure. Yeah

the water. Yeah, we have those here in Georgia. Of course. What's the other copper heads will get in the creeks and rivers. Um. So these are because they have no resistance points. Obviously in the water they can just slink along quicker. But on the land they use these rocks and branches and little divots and dents in the landscape. To uh just you know, propel itself, Like I'm gonna put my belly on that rock and shoot myself forward

a little bit. Yeah, and then whatever is below my belly, it's gonna be on the rock and just inches itself along. We'll not inches. These things can move in some cases right by inches, well by feet, like the black Mamba thirteen. Wow, that is so scary because that's a pretty poisonous um snake. Yeah. I think it's number five on the list, which we'll get to. Um. There's side winding too, which is crazy. Yeah. Those are creepy looking. It'll get your dog disqualified in

a UM in a dog show. Yeah, well yeah, is that one of the big strikes against side gating. Yeah, for sure. We did one on dog shows, right, yeah we did. Yeah. It's good for UM for snakes though, especially ones where there aren't those resistant points like rocks and branches and leaves that a snake can use to propel itself. Um, say, like along sand in a sandy desert. Yeah, that's where I've usually seen side winder. That's where the sidewinding goes on. Yeah, it's the same s shape, but

it's um. The cool thing about sidewinding to me is if you slow it down and look closely, the major portions of the snake's body is off the sand when it's moving. It's like just sort of check it out. Yeah, like my fronts on and my backs down. Now my backs down on, my fronts on, and the whole time the middle is off the ground. Yeah, there's just basically like the parts that curved down. Everything else is held up. Those are the only points in contact with the ground

and trying to hop I get the feeling. Yeah, like I wish I head legs doing my best here, I'm doing my best. Um. There's the caterpillar, which I haven't seen much. Um that is the same rectilinear locomotion, but it's up and down like creates that rippling effect like you would see a caterpillar. Um, I don't see that a whole lot. Well. Yeah, rather than side to side, the curves are up and down. It's like the breakdancing move the worm. Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. Uh,

they should have called it the snake. Should And then my favorite the concertina, which is sort of like the s but I get the feeling. It's like, uh, when you see the old hand accordion in a cartoon, like the front moves forward and then stops, and then the bat catches up, then the front moves forward again. That's sort of what it looks like. Yeah, and they use concertin emotion for um climbing stuff like trees usually. Yeah, there's another disconcerting thing about snakes that they can climb

trees and then jump out of them. Here we are saying you shouldn't fear snakes, and all we're doing is make people fear snakes again. Another cool graphic though on snake movement on the article here at how stuff works. All right, so let's talk uh, big snakes. Okay, because the anaconda, I think everyone knows is the largest snake, and those things are great swimmers that can weigh as much as five and fifty pounds. About those things. I actually enjoyed that dumb movie. I never saw it really,

that was terrible, but terribly good. You know, I had a really good cast for such a bad movie, like Owen Wilson and John Foyt and ice Cube j Lo. I don't know. Marlon Brando, Yeah, he was the snake right. Um. I always I could do a Brando impression so bad right now? Oh yeah, which a movie would you do? I would just do him as a snake. The seed Mine would have to be as like the Vito Corleone is a snake because I can only do brand Over through his movies. That's fine, go ahead, no no, no no, no,

I'm not gonna do it. Okay, Um make a man offler. It couldn't refuse. That was definitely worth the weight. They can be up to twelve inches in diameter. And you're going to find these dudes in uh rivers in South America, and they spend their time in the water because they're so large. Uh that's the best way they can get around, right, They're they're huge. Yeah, so they're again less resistance in the water, so they've learned to be pretty good swimmers.

And they are quite the hunter. Um. They their eyes and their nose are on the tops of their heads, so very much like an alligator or crocodile. They can be almost completely submerged but still keep an eye on their prey. They're tough dudes. They're not poisonous. Their constrictors right, yeah. I think they're related to BoA's. Yeah, they're related to boas and they can they can hold their breath for up to ten minutes if they do go underwater, which is pretty crazy too. But um, what was the um

I even found that article the UM. It was an article on smith sony and about the Titana Boa. Yeah, this ancient Uh, I think it was after the dinosaurs, correct, Yeah, it wasn't that very heavy salad day time after when all of the former prey of the dinosaurs were allowed to get huge. One of the things that got huge was the Titana Boa. It was about fifty six million years ago. And there's a um a coal pit and Columbia that is yielded just a trove of fossils from

this era, including the Titana Boa where it was discovered. Yeah, and I think the remarkable thing about this one, aside from its size, was that they were able to find a snake skull, which is a really rare thing apparently because when skulls, when snake dies, their skull bones just sort of go away to the wind because they're in so many little pieces exactly like a human skull is basically two pieces your lower jaw and the rest of your skull. Um with a snake skull and we'll get

into why. But there's a like you say, a bunch of different pieces to them, and yeah, when when they died, just disintegrates. There's snakes skull parts, but an intex snake skull. It's rare, very rare. So then to discover an entirely new, fifty six million year old species of giant snake with an intext skull was a big deal. And they found the Titana boa and they figured out that it grew to about forty long, weighed about a ton. Wow, so it was about as long as a school bust and

weighed as much as a rhinoceros does. Crazy, and uh, it could eat gators, turtles, like everything. It's just it was the king of this Colombian jungle back back in the day. Yeah, I imagine it would ever wanted to. Yes, that is I can't imagine. I mean, an anacon of these days is impressive, right, but a forty foter that's something else. I mean, it basically is what they were predicting in the movie Anaconda unwaitingly just probably about forty

in a ton right in that movie? Yeah, really bad c G. I Yeah, to make it all happen Uh, well, let's talk about eating a little bit um. One of the remarkable things about the snake is that it does swallow its prey hole. And it can do this. And everyone's seen the snake when they go to unhinge that jaw, that is what they're doing. They have a very uh

specialized feature and it's called a quadrate bone. And the upper jaw connects to the lower jaw with this, and it can unhinge itself, and the rest of the skull is connected by like muscle intending, so it's it can get up to like a hundred and fifty degrees wide open, right, And it's not just the upper jaw and the lower jaw that can unhinge and get wider. I think, what do you say a hundred fifty degrees? It also can

expand side to side. So like the bones that make up the front of the snake's skull are like you said, connected by bone or by muscle intending, so they can stretch apart as well. So not only does it get bigger vertically this, the whole mouth can get bigger horizontally as well. And it can again, a snake can need a whole rabbit. That's right, and how it does that is and this is um how the article describes it.

It opens its mouth and begins to walk it's lower jaw over the prey as its backward curving teeth grind up the animal. You know, it just sort of sucks it in. Right. It depends on the species of snake whether it has bad akward curving teeth or or not. But not venomous snakes do have the backward curving teeth so that the prey can't get out. They can get in, but they can't get out to check in, but they

don't check out. All along they are crushing um as the deeper goes in the digestive digestive track, crushing this thing down um until eventually it's just broken down in the nutrients, just like eating a regular meal exactly. And again, it takes a lot more digestive juices to to make this happen. So the snakes just producing this stuff over time. Sometimes it takes venom yeah, you know, to subdue this animal because of a rabbit. It's gonna be like I

don't want to go in that mouth. No, I'm going to scratch your soft forets like you might get me. But I'm gonna take part of you down with me. So that's why they have these um, wicked little things called fangs, and um, they're in the upper jaw. And venomous snakes have the two hallmark hollowed out fangs that are just basically, uh, a delivery system, a sharp little delivery system. Uh. And they have glands under each eye called venom ducks, and that's where the good stuff comes from.

They just squeeze it through uh those little little things, right. And supposedly the venom passes through other glands where more chemicals are added to it and it becomes this amazing specialized brew. Um. And apparently each snake species kind of has its own signature death cocktail. But there are some toxins that are found in just about all of them. Um, there's neurotoxins breakdown your nervous system function, including things like breathing.

So that'll that'll stop your we'll stop your life eventually paralysis, right, you don't even be able to move, which is why it's a big one that helps them defeed, you know, because all of a sudden, rabbits like alive, but you know, has that look in its eye, yes, like I can't move. What's going on? The time is near. I hate Tuesdays. Uh. Cardiotoxins are gonna deteriorate the heart and basically say you're

done beating. UM, and then they have hemotoxins and that will erupt your blood vessels and you're gonna bleed internally. You know what else I've found it's pretty neat. So that's Those are venomous snakes. Remember we talked about like what's the most poisonous animal or venomous animal in the world. We had an episode on that. Um, there are some so venomous snake is something that produces its own poison.

There are some snakes that are technically poisonous because they eat like poisonous tree frogs or something like that, and they collect the poison from the frogs and store it and then they use it to catch Preyora's defense later on. But they're not physically producing their own poison. They're collecting it and deploying it. And they wouldn't have fangs either no or else they wouldn't have fangs with the hollowed

out delivery system. Interesting. Uh. When they they do have fangs, by the way they are, they fold backwards in the mouth. Did you already say that. No, there's like pockets though that like are in their gums, the roof of their mouth. They're hard palate. Oh it's like a little holster. Okay, yeah, because it's not. It just go right through the bottom of their mouth and they look pretty funny. Yeah, they would fang Holster another band name. I knew this is

gonna have a lot of band names. The venom can also have UM. If you heard our blood episode, uh a, glutenants and anticoagulants which are either going to make the blood clot or thin out. Remember in our blood type episode there was a glute nation was what happens when you mix unlike blood not good? No, um, And like again, like you mentioned, this is just another addition to the cocktail. Um that's added to the other stuff you know. Um. And then if you want to die another way, you

could be constricted. Yeah, there are boas and anacondas and they they wrap around you. Well, first they'll they'll get you in their mouth so you're not moving. Then they'll wrap around you and you finally exhale, and then they say that was your last breath, my friend, So long sucker, because I'm gonna squeeze you so tight You're not gonna be able to inhale ever again. Yeah, and it's not just the lungs that they crushed. They also crushed the heart.

They squeeze so tight that the heart is prevented from contracting and expanding. You ever had a boa constrictor like on your arm, like friends bet or whatever? Yeah, I remember the one that um when we were shooting. Oh yeah, yeah, did did you pull that one? Yeah? I think yeah, yeah it did. Once in college, I was at a party and someone had a snake and I was, um, had a few drinks. It was like, I'm gonna get

over my fearce snakes, and now is the time. And he let the snake like you know, crawl around me and wrap around my arm. And I was like all right, this is awesome and slightly creeped out, but I was like, all right, I can I can handle this. It wasn't like you put a tcharanche along on me. No, I could not handle that. That would be very freaky. Yeah. All right, Well, after this message break, we are going to talk a little bit about snake sex. Alright, you

ready to talk snake sex. I'm ready. Man, this is the creepiest part to me. Oh no, it's not beautiful. A female snake is the one who sends out the order. Um, hey, I'm ready to have some sex, right, So I'm gonna be a pheromones pheromones, and I'm gonna leave a little trail of pheromones everywhere I go today because today is the day, all right. And the male snake picks up that sent and it's like, I'm gonna follow this trail until I catch up to this lovely lady at the

end of the trail. And then he finally catches up to her. Apparently the lady snake is just going about a normal business, but the male snake is like, well, I know what I'm doing today and following the trail every where he goes. Um. And when he does catch up to her, he says, hey, how's it going, And he does that by like bumping the back of her head with his chin basically like hey, I think that's hey, yeah,

hey you yeah, pay attention to me, okay. And then after that, after he's got her attention, um, he also is like sliding over like back and forth, just basically being a pest um. And finally, the lady snake, if she likes the guy, she likes what she sees, she'll be like, all right, fine and poop up goes the tail. I wonder if a snake, female snake, ever sees a lizard, and it's like, oh, man, if only it didn't have like those arms and hands, what they could do? You know? Um,

I don't think that's what. Snakes don't think like that, do they. I don't know. All right, So she lifts her tail and she said, I like you, I'm willing and able. Um, let's do this. And so they wrap their tails around each other and they sort of just intertwined until their cloacas meet up. And that's where it all happens, my friend, that's where it all happens. The male snakes hemy peens, which is his reproductive organ, uh says, here's some sperm that you got a hemmy, it's funny.

Uh yeah, He delivers sperm through his hemmy peen. Why is this so awkward? I don't know. So yes, the hemmy peens delivers the sperm and the female becomes fertilizeday, and now they can make baby snakes or lay eggs. Yeah, this is intus like some of them do both. Yeah, and that that I thought that was unusual. It would seem like, I don't know, in nature, usually don't have

one or the other, you know, or both. Yeah, I mean like maybe like this kind of animal, like a bird lays an egg, but a panda bear lays has live young. Right, there aren't pan bears that can also lay eggs or have live young. That just seems a little too random. Different egg hatch would be about the cutest thing that would break the internet. If a little panda bear hatch from an egg it was like two pounds,

that would be pretty cute. Um. So if they have live young, they can give birth to anywhere from one to a hundred and fifty snakes, which is uh, you know, might be some people's nightmare. Yeah. Like remember that part in Indiana Jones and Tempily Doom not Raiders, No, it was the they were at the feast at the maharaj Is people and they bring out that snake and slice it open all the alive. Oh yeah, yeah, man, they

make good snakes. I forgot because in Raiders the famous asps um Hey that was a good uh sala was that his name. I think so right. I don't know, man, I'm gonna get killed for that one. If it's not UM. If they lay eggs, they can hatch them internally, hold them internally until they hatch or give birth to the egg, and then the egg will hatch UM. And like you said, that's it's sort of the combination method. If they hold the eggs internally UM, and they take care of their young,

but not really like forever. Like sometimes they'll even leave the eggs before they hatch. Sometimes they'll stick around and protect them for a little while. So it sort of depends. It depends on the species. I guess the reason why they would have so many different qualities in the same like family, UM is that they've been around for like a hundred and sixty million years. Yeah, and the variety

of their distribution all over the world. Yeah. So speaking of variety, like we said, just five percent of snakes and poisonous, but the ones that are poisonous can be really really poisonous. Yeah, just not just mildly poisonous, but like really deadly poisonous. Well you mean venomous still are poisonous, thank you? Yeah, I mean venomous you're absolutely right. Yeah. I found a list of most venomous snakes um, and lucky for us here in the US of A, in

Canada and Mexico, we only have the rattlesnake to contend with. Well, wait a minute, I thought we had like water moccasins and copperas No, as far as the most venomous, like a water moccasin bite, you'll be fine. Oh really, I didn't know that. I thought it was like deadly. No. Well, I mean if you just like went back and watch TV, maybe, but you go to the doctor. It's not like I'm gonna die in thirty minutes, because it's all about what it comes down to is how eddy the venom is?

Like I got bit by a watermark. But judge duty is on what am I gonna do? Decisions, decision. I gotta see this verdict Um, the Eastern diamond back is the most venomous in North America. And that was the

one that I encountered. My snake story. When I was a kid, we were looking at property with my parents in the North Georgia Mountains and my brother and I were running ahead and there was a rattlesnake, a big, big, rattlesnake coiled and ready to go, and your brother just pulled us six shooters shot it once in the head and like toil is gun and put it back right now. The old mountain man came in with a stick like just from nowhere, like running behind us, and one jab

got the head. Geez. Yeah, it was scary man. And looking back, I'm like, I wish you hadn't killed the snake, but we were. We were four ft from this thing and it was completely coiled with his head up like he was ready to go. Yeah, he could have totally gotten this. Uh. Number nine is the death adder in Austra Eliot in New Guinea, and they kill other snakes.

But if you happen upon them, you will notice their triangular shaped head, which is always a dead giveaway usually that that's not a good snake or not again a good snake, but not one you want to like to play with. And by the way, Chuck, if you had a um you encountered the four ft rattlesnake, you could expect a striking distance of two thirds of his body length is usually the rule of thumb for a rattlesnake. We were probably close to striking distance then man, Yeah,

that's scary. Uh. We were out in the woods too. That wouldn't have been a pretty scene, you know. Um, the old mountain man would have just had to put you down immediately. Now he was just laid on your face. He probably would have done the old suck it out with his mouth and spit, which I think is not the way to do it from what I understand. UM, vipers are next number eight. China, India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, very fast, very ill tempered. The Philippine cobra.

I didn't know this. Cobras generally aren't, um. I mean, they're venomous, but their venom isn't among the most deadly, like you could go watch TV for a little while. No, probably not. But the Philippine cobra is the exception. Um. They have the most deadly venom of all the cobras, very narrow, toxic. There's the tiger snake. Yeah, uh, this one can kill you within thirty minutes. Yeah, supposedly pretty quick.

And before there was such thing as anne vent and tiger snakes killed at a rate of about six Also in Australia. By the way, as you'll notice that as a trend, and when we talked about the most venomous creatures, Australia was always around. We have our black Mamma which we talked about in Africa, very aggressive, very fast, and they can strike up to twelve times in a row and a single bite is capable of killing anywhere between ten and twenty five adults, very deadly. It's super deadly.

It's still not the deadliest though, is that Nope, there's several more. Number four, the taipan Uh, also in Australia, can kill twelve thousand guinea pigs um with a single bite. That's like, that's what they compare calories too as well. It's like eight guinea pigs where the calories um. The blue k r a i t the blue crate malaysian um and it is the most deadly of that species in South Southeast Asian Indonesia. Fifty of the bites even with anti ven and you will die. That is so scary.

That's super scary. That is a that is a deadly deadly snake. Number two, the Eastern brown one fourteen thousand of an ounce is enough to kill an adult human and um, they live. The scary thing about them is they live in Australia near a major population center. So those are the ones I think that you can go out and find like the second most deadly snake in the world in your yard or like a bar or something like that at work. Can you imagine that man?

And number one the inland taipe in or the fierce snake. And this is another subspecies, but they put it on the list because they just said it deserves to be there, and um, it is the most toxic venom in in the world. Hundred and ten milligrams of venom in one bite is enough to kill about one human beings or five million guinea picks. The good thing about this one, though, is it's not super aggressive and you're not going to see one very much. It's rare to even encounter one.

For that reason, they don't have any fatalities on record. Oh really yeah on record? Uh? And what was that list from? Was that I O nine or was it a list verse? Let's verse lest verse put it together for ut Man. Yeah, double check, though I think it's pretty accurate. I'd say just any of those ten um avoiding the wild, don't kill him that unless you have to, right, you know, but always hike with a flamethrower. Chucks, Have you ever heard there's no snakes in Ireland? No? Is

that a saying? Oh? Yes? St. St Patrick supposedly drove all the snakes out of Ireland. That's one of the reasons he got so famous. He did not do that because there are snakes in Ireland, of course, right, No, oh, there really aren't. There are in like zoos and and and in people's homes. But no, there's no snakes in the wild in Ireland. Seriously, what about England, Scotland and Wales.

I think that there may be, But Ireland, when snakes were developing, was underwater and snakes never made it over there. So there really aren't snakes in Ireland as far as I can tell. But are there in Scotland and England? I'm guessing yes, surely one has crossed the border. And I mean like the fact that there are some like in zoos and people's homes mean that there eventually will be because you know, like down in Florida, people would like take pythons that they had as pets and just

release them in the everylades. And now that every lads have a really large python population, a non named python population. People are stupid and they didn't realize that that Python was gonna get large exactly. Yeah, yep, go humans. Uh, you got anything else? That's it, man, That's snakes. That's all I got. You got anything else? All right? Well, since we have nothing else, we want you to go

learn more about snakes. You can type the words snakes in the search bart how stuff works dot com and check out our podcast page for this episode with all sorts of cool extra links. And since I said cool, it's time for a listener mail. Hey guys, my name is Kristen. I'm gonna call this. Hey guys, my name is Kristen Lupus slash lupus. I want to send an email thanking both of you, even though my relatively new fan,

I really think you're saving my life. A year and a half ago, at twenty two, I was diagnosed with lupus, which is a progressive auto I mean disease, and about six eight months ago I started also struggling with the depression. My boyfriend Ross tried every trick in the book, and eventually I was I wasn't even getting out of bed. I started to have passive suicidal idealization. It's a very dark time. My family really joined together to get me

help though. I have a great psychiatrist, great therapist, and I'm proud to say I am recovering. Uh. YouTube factor in because my boyfriend recommended I listened to podcast on panic attacks. He found to be a really helpful tool when he was trying to figure out how to help me cope. Uh. I couldn't leave my bed, but I did have my iPhone, so I listened, and I kept

listening and kept listening for days. Eventually I started laughing again, and then started looking at the articles related to topics of the podcast and being like, this is like the same thing, and it really gave me something new and positive to talk about with my friends and family. I listened to the show when I feel like I'm going to have an episode of panic. It helps me to breathe and to laugh. Oh that is so cool. It is. It stimulates my brain and keeps me thinking, wondering, in

and awe of all sorts of awesome things. So thank you for your help, and please keep up the amazing work. I still have plenty of content to get through, but I hope that's two of you keep making the podcast for plenty time to come. We will. We have no plans to stop anytime soon. And that is from Christin Wolf and she's a native Atlanta, but she is in Washington, d C. So Kristin, he should come out and see our show in June in Washington, d C. Yeah, talk

about relaxing. Way do you see it alive? Well? Yeah, but it's also extremely exciting too. Yeah that's true. Um, thanks a lot, Christen for chuning that. We're glad we got to help you out. And thanks for Ross the Boyfriend for helping around Ross. Yeah, I mean, nice job. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us to let us know anything, how we've helped you out, how we messed you up, whatever, um, you can tweet to

us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and check out our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com