Last Tuesday was World Snake Day and I published some general aspects about snakes on Instagram! I talked about their ecological importance, how most of them are not venomous, and how the fear of snakes is not really a snake-specific evolutionary aversion. We can avoid killing-for-fear through factual education about these amazing and important organisms.
The thing is, my posts from Tuesday seem to have awoken some of your curiosity! (Awesome!) So I wrote this blog post to try to answer your questions and spread the snake love (or at least help with your fear)!
Q1: “What should I do if I encounter a snake?”
First of all, thank you for asking! In my experience and from news from back home, people easily freak out and try to capture or kill them. I really hope this post calms your snake-nerves, so let’s get into it.
If you encounter a snake outside in nature, you’ll see that they will just try to get away from you. Just stay at a safe distance from it, or step away if you’re already too close. You’ll notice when they get nervous: different species behave differently, but mostly they coil up in a specific way and keep looking in your direction (no, they will not chase you). They will either wait for you to go away or they will try to go away themselves. Remember: YOU are the THREAT here. Just give them room to go!
DO NOT poke it, or try to “push it away”, or put it in a bag, or attack it in any way with anything (yes, this is very common). THIS IS HOW ACCIDENTS HAPPEN (and then you blame the poor snakes).
“But what if I find one inside my house?” Good point! Well, it depends on where you are (country/region). Usually, you should be able to call some special company or firefighters to handle these type of situations. If not, and if you’re in a region very prone to this, I would recommend learning which species live nearby. I KNOW IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE and this is “easier said than done”, especially if you already fear snakes.
️For example, here in Austria there are only 7 or 8 species of snakes. From these, only 3 are venomous. In this case it’s pretty easy to just know how they look (and where they are distributed). However, if you’re in places like back home – Guatemala – with more than 130 species of snakes of which more than 20 are venomous: learning what’s near you would still be recommended, but the top thing to do is to stay calm, stay away, DO NOT bother/poke it nor try to capture it, and call the firemen.
You would probably be scared of them whether they are venomous or not, I understand that. Unfortunately, I cannot change your mind instantaneously, so I would insist on keeping your distance while someone comes help or it goes away. (Really, I get you! I have an ophidiophobic mom and I’ve seen her reactions and panic attacks with even the smallest most harmless snakes, no matter what I tried to tell her. Phobias are a real thing and not something to joke about!). So keep those emergency numbers nearby and try to remind yourself that the snake could not care less about you and must be left alone!
Q2: “How do I know if a snake is venomous?”
There’s still this common misunderstanding that specific characteristics indicate being venomous. The truth is that this highly depends on WHERE you are. Vertical pupils? RedYellowBlackYellow pattern? Bright colors? Triangular head? Some of these “common” beliefs KIND OF WORK in SOME temperate regions. Head to the tropics and there’s not one easy pattern and there’s a lot of mimetism going on. Several exceptions to the “rules”, we could say.
Know where you are and what you have, there’s really no way around this but to educate ourselves and others. The real question is: WHY do you want to know? To grab them? Just DON’T. UNLESS you are a scientist, trained on snake handling and have a research and education purpose, there is absolutely NO reason for you to be grabbing wildlife. Animals also get stressed: let’s keep that to a minimum. Again: THIS IS HOW ACCIDENTS HAPPEN. Leave them alone. And if there’s one in your house: call the firemen or company in your area.
(And/or text me a picture -from far away- and I’ll calm the crap out of you. Sounds like a joke but I’m not kidding! I’ll help if and when I can!)
Q3: “What to do in case of a snake bite” (and another related question: “how to administer the antidote”)
The most important thing is: Don’t panic (again, I know, this is easier said than done, but trust me on this one! Keep reading and you’ll know why).
Most snakes are not venomous. The ones that ARE venomous spend a lot of energy producing venom to hunt down and digest their prey. They really don’t want to waste it on us. Even if they throw a bite at you, the most likely scenario is that they did not inject venom – these are the so-called “dry bites”. Unless, of course, you were provoking them, and, well, what did you expect?! But of course, honest accidents also happen.
So really: don’t panic. If you or someone near you, in any case, gets bitten by a venomous snake WITH venom injected and you panic, you could accelerate the venom traveling through your body (and you don’t want that). What you SHOULD do is keep hydrating!
So step 1 = stay calm and try not to move the person and/or body part that was bit. Step 2 is to head to the nearest health center. In between, loosen any tight clothing, shoes, etc., in case the bitten area swells. Yes, you can and should clean the wound with soap and or disinfect it to avoid any other potential risks and drink lots of water. (Bonus step: from a safe distance, try as much as possible to identify the snake, at least by shape, color, patterns, since the antidotes are somewhat snake-specific)
(traveling tip: if you plan on going into venomous snake areas and indeed going looking for them, research beforehand where hospitals and health centers are and whether they have the antidotes or not -and which types- and write that down and take that info, phones, and addresses with you)
“There’s a biologist nearby, maybe they can help!” Hey, thanks for thinking about us in such a heroic way! But NO. Besides trying to calm you down, identifying the species and taking you to the nearest health center, we can’t do anything. Why? Our immune system response to the antiophidic serum (the antidote) can be different from person to person. When the need to apply an antiophidic serum comes up, this must be monitored by proper medical personnel to know how you are reacting, how much to apply, how often, and how to counteract potential nasty reactions. Actually, you could die because of the reaction to the antidote and not even because of the snake venom itself! This is why we don’t do this in the field nor without proper medical experts.
Fun fact: people bitten by non venomous snakes have shown similar reactions and symptoms as if it had been venomous because of the good’ol placebo effect.
What NOT to do:
- DO NOT administer pain killers or any other medication (nor electricity, herbs, oils, alcohol, NOTHING)
- DO NOT suck out the venom with your mouth (not only are you putting yourself also in risk, it is overall useless; no amount of pressure from a human mouth could suck out enough of the already injected venom which is also not going to stay in the bite spot for long)
- Forget about tourniquets! Applying pressure with bandages is okay, but tourniquets are troublesome especially when done wrong (very common) and how long you leave them. The snake bite won’t make you lose your limb (when responding accordingly), but a tourniquet might!
Let’s repeat: stay calm, go to a health center or hospital as soon as possible, let the experts take care of it. And remember: you most likely were not really bitten, or not by a venomous snake. Although snake bites are common worldwide, fatal cases are very rare.
MYTH: “when a snake bites, it needs some time to produce more venom and bite again”. Nope, that’s not true. Venomous glands in snakes are modified salivary glands. When you spit, do you need some time to produce more spit? No. Same goes for venom glands.
Love The Unloved
Snakes just want to chill their lives away and eat rats. Okay, they eat a lot more than that – and are also food for other organisms as well! But they definitely don’t want to waste energy (nor venom!) on a scared silly human. Appreciate them from afar, give them space, learn to respect and love wildlife.
Don’t do to wildlife what you wouldn’t like huge aliens to do to you! (My crappy wisdom words of today)
Final thoughts…
- Leave snakes be
- Love them from afar
- Inform yourself and others
- Educate yourself and others
- Snakes don’t want to chase you or kill you or eat you
- The Anaconda movie is crap
- Snakes on a Plane is crap
- Do what I say not what I do
- Become a biologist (just kidding but man it’s awesome)
I hope I cleared things up!
Did I confuse you? Or raised more questions? Ask away in the comments or DM!
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[kofi]