One of the most common fears people have are of snakes. When you think about it, it kind of makes sense. They are completely limbless which is absolutely wild, and as a result, their motility looks completely different from anything we're used to. It gives them sort of a mystic vibe. Unfortunately, being so different from us bipedal humans, people tend to have a fear of snakes which can ultimately lead to myths and tales that continue to instill fear.
These myths can vary from exaggerating their behavior to exaggerating their venom levels. The end result is the same, people continue to perpetuate a fear of snakes. This fear will often time lead to people being overly prone to killing them, regardless of being venomous or not. Killing a snake should never be the course of action taken to remove a snake from your premises. We'll touch on proper removal techniques later.
Locally speaking, we have 6 venomous snakes. Most common are the copperhead (agkistrodon contortrix), cottonmouth (agkistrodon picsivorus), and the timber/canebreak rattlesnake (crotalus horrid us). The rest of our 42 local species are all non-venomous, and are of no harm to humans. So when encountering a snake, there's a great probability that it's non-venomous. However, even if you stumble across a venomous snake, its first reaction will most likely be to avoid the situation and escape the area that you're in. So if there's a path to escape you, it will most likely take it. The only real situations when you'll be bit by a venomous snake (or non-venomous) is if you accidentally step on it, if you trap it and it cannot escape, or by attempting to handle it. If you're trying to remove one from your property, spraying it with a water hose will get it to move along. If that doesn't work, or you don't have access to water, there are numerous local people that will do venomous snake removal for free. Killing a snake doesn't have to be an option.
Through education and learning to identify your local species, the fear of snakes can be eliminated. That fear can even be turned into fascination, as it has with me. Snakes provide great usefulness to local ecosystems, and can be great pest and rodent control as well. So learning more about your local species can benefit yourselves and the local snake population. I encourage everyone that knows someone who is afraid of snakes to try and educate them about all the benefits snakes provide. You might not get them to become a snake lover, but as long as they are not perpetuating fear and promoting killing them, that's a win.
2 comments:
Why do you think the odd morphology of snakes, in particular, is feared compared with other animals whose body forms are very different from our own (like birds, dolphins, fish, snails, etc.)?
Dr. Welch, great question. The dissimilar morphology is probably feared because some are large and can be relatively quick considering the lack of limbs. Most other limbless terrestrial/fossorial species are slow and small (i.e snails, worms). When considering large and quick marine species (mostly sharks), those are generally feared as well. Great point, and I should have touched on this in my post.
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