SNAKES!!!!!!!! and Science

[Kriselda Gray]

My #1 phobia is snakes. They can send me into a panic attack/fight-or-flight mode. I go batsh&t nuts.

I think I’ll just stand over here next to neon. Just in case. I mean I don’t want him to be afraid.

And I'll be glad to keep him company, too. We can have a nice very comforting support group for neon. I'm sure the snakes will be busy enough with y'all they won't mind us staying back a bit...

[northland10]

My #1 phobia is snakes. They can send me into a panic attack/fight-or-flight mode. I go batsh&t nuts.

I've tried to quell this irrationality over the decades to some degree. But I am certainly not bringing one into my house as a pet.

I think this is a major one, if not the most common, phobia and how it ended up in the bible.

SO, now you all know the secret of how to terrorize and torture me.

Salizar Slitheran and Voldermort would not have been scarry if they had spoken in Booby tongue and not snake language.

Snakes can dance.

[much ado]

We used to take our kids to "Cal Day" on the Berkeley campus when the museums and departments have displays and presentations. Our daughter always had to go to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where they had grad students showing off live animals. Our daughter had to handle the snakes. We have many pictures of her as a twelve-year-old or so with a beaming smile and a big snake draped around her neck. No fear of snakes there. They seem to have stopped doing the live snake handling, probably out of liability concerns.

ETA:
Found this on a page dated 2018, so maybe they are still doing it...

Every year on Cal Day, the MVZ hosts its largest single open house event. We display some of our more interesting specimens, provides hands-on experiences with animals like snakes, frogs, lizards, tuco-tucos, rabbits, salamanders, and hedgehogs, and at the same time, teaches the public about the environment and animal biology.

https://mvz.berkeley.edu/calday/

Anyway, it is quite fun and educational. It happens during a weekend in April.

They have a timelapse of the event showing the main aisle in the collections area.

[Phoenix520]

Very pretty sneks, Aza.

[Azastan]

We used to take our kids to "Cal Day" on the Berkeley campus when the museums and departments have displays and presentations. Our daughter always had to go to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where they had grad students showing off live animals.

I grew up in San Jose, California. San Jose has a park called Alum Rock Park, which is the oldest municipal park in California. At one time, it was possible to 'check out' some of the animals from the Nature Center in the park. We took home gopher snakes on several occasions.

"Opened in 1953, the Youth Science Institute - Alum Rock Science and Nature Center, operated by the Youth Science Institute, features natural history exhibits and a collection of live teaching animals, including several injured and non-releasable hawks and owls that are found in the region. The center offers nature and science school and group programs, after-school science and summer camp programs"

This is why I am not afraid of snakes.

[Phoenix520]

I had a garter snake that escaped its terrarium once. It slithered down to the basement and nestled in a laundry hamper where our cleaning lady found it.

She literally ran screaming from the house. She never came back. My mom was mad and made me give the snake to my brothers’s science class.

[Foggy]

I try to walk every day on the North Raleigh Greenway, which goes right by our house and meanders along the mighty Neuse River, and I've seen:

• black racers
• garter snakes
• rough green snakes
• corn snakes
• copperheads
• Eastern king snakes

Lots of turtles, too also.

They cross the paved greenway to get to the river.

But snake season won't start until spring.

[northland10]

Back when I was in something like 6th or 7th grade, I briefly had a sort-of pet baby hognose. It was generally friendly. The only time it did the flattened head thing (they do this to mimic poisonous snakes) and hissed was when I built a maze for it to go through. It was having none of that. He went to the local school for a week and then was released back where we found him (or her, I did not ask about its, um, parts such as those mentioned earlier in this thread).

I grew up in an area where we don't have snakes that want to kill you. The Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake is really shy, would just prefer not to bite you, and even when it does, it often does not inject venom into humans (or so I was told but the rattlesnakes and I are just fine not testing this thesis). Because of its threatened status, when somebody spotted one sunning itself in the middle of the camp road where I was Program Director, the long-serving Nature Director, by then Camp Director, got all excited and blew out of the office to check it out. They did kindly convince it to leave its happy sunny spot since they did not want it run over or to have issues with scouts walking by.

My biggest issues with snakes happened in ways like this from my scouting years:

Friend: SNAKE
Me: Where?
Friend: You're standing on it.
Me: Oh, oops.

I felt bad for that poor garter snake. He seemed fine when he slithered away (or she... see discussion of snake parts earlier in this thread).

[sugar magnolia]

Many years ago I was a docent at the zoo (my husband was a zoo keeper when we met) and we took animals to local pre-schools and nursing homes and did presentations at the zoo. I always went straight to the reptiles to get an animal. Everybody else wanted the birds (not me!) or hedgehogs or prairie dogs. The cute stuff. Nope. Give me the snakes or caimans or iguanas. The bigger and more colorful the better.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Snek on a small plane!

https://www.newsweek.com/deadly-snake-f ... ng-1792657

Deadly Snake Found on Plane Forces 'Hero' Pilot to Make Emergency Landing


Pilot Rudolf Erasmus was forced to make an emergency landing on Monday after discovering what is believed to be a 4-foot-long Cape cobra, one of South Africa's most venomous snakes, on board his plane.

"This was definitely a first and not something you get trained to handle," Erasmus told TimesLive.

Erasmus and his four passengers were flying from Worcester, in the Western Cape, to the old Nelspruit Airfield near Mbombela in northeastern South Africa. The crew had to make a few stops along the way and were en route to the Wonderboom National Airport near Johannesburg at the time of the incident, after stopping at the Bram Fischer International Airport in Bloemfontein to refuel.


About a third of the way through their journey, Erasmus felt something strange against his body. "We were cruising at 11,000 feet in the air when I felt something cold against my hip," Erasmus told local news outlet the Lowvelder.

At first, he said he thought it was his water bottle. "[But] as I turned to my left and looked down I saw the cobra putting its head back underneath my seat," he told TimesLive.

"I had a moment of stunned silence, not sure if I should tell the passengers because I didn't want to cause a panic. But obviously they needed to know at some point what was going on."

As calmly as he could, Erasmus told the passengers that there was an "unwelcome passenger" inside the aircraft and that he was going to have to make an emergency landing.

After a tense 10 to 15 minutes, Erasmus successfully landed the plane at the nearest airport, in Welkom. Carefully, the passengers disembarked, with Erasmus getting out last.

"I stood on the wing on the plane and moved the seat forward to try and spot the snake," Erasmus said. "It was curled up under my seat. It was quite a big fellow."

Local snake catcher Johan de Klerk was called to the scene, but by the time he arrived the snake had disappeared.

[Frater I*I]

Snek on a small plane!

I'll let Samuel Jackson take care of this one...




I'll see myself out....

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[RTH10260]

you have been warned

[Dave from down under]

[Chilidog]

We had been taking care of my son's two geckos while he went off to grad school. When he was home this summer I went out and brought a new, bigger enclosure for drogon the gargoyle. He spent a day rebuilding both enclosures and decided to take them back down with him.

I kind of miss them now.

[AndyinPA]

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

There is a new “”grandchild” category- grandgecko- “gg”

[RTH10260]

the grandgecko has grown wings and feathers

[RTH10260]

Scientists set up webcam in Colorado rattlesnake ‘mega den’ with up to 2,000 reptiles
Researchers say rattlesnakes have an undeservedly maligned reputation but are social creatures who make good mothers

Associated Press
Wed 17 Jul 2024 02.32 CEST

A “mega den” with as many as 2,000 rattlesnakes isn’t top binge-watching for many people. But a round-the-clock webcam in Colorado is providing a viewing bonanza for scientists and other snake enthusiasts whose observations are helping to broaden understanding of these unusual – and undeservedly maligned – reptiles.

The remote site on private land in northern Colorado is on a hillside full of rock crevices where the snakes can keep warm and hide from predators.

“This is a big, big den for rattlesnakes. This is one of the biggest ones we know of,” Emily Taylor, a California Polytechnic State University biology professor leading the Project RattleCam research, said Tuesday.

The Cal Poly researchers set up the webcam in May, working off their knowledge from a previous webcam they set up at a rattlesnake den in California. The exact location in Colorado is kept secret to discourage snake lovers – or haters – Taylor said.

The high-elevation Colorado rattlesnakes take refuge in the den for winter and emerge in the spring for a short season of activity compared to rattlesnakes in the south-west. This time of year, only pregnant female snakes are at the den while males move into the lower country nearby.

The weather station and camera setup for Project RattleCam, in northern Colorado
View image in fullscreen
The weather station and camera setup for Project RattleCam, in northern Colorado. Photograph: Emily Taylor/AP
In August, the babies will be born. They’re called pups and, unlike nearly all other reptiles, they do not hatch from eggs but are born alive.

Also unlike other snakes, rattlesnake mothers care for their young, protecting them against predators and shielding them with their bodies. Sometimes rattlesnakes even care for the young of others.

“Rattlesnakes are actually really good mothers. People don’t know that,” Taylor said.



https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... cam-stream

[AndyinPA]

Rattlesnakes are found in PA, too. This year's heat and arid weather are bringing them out more.

[Foggy]

Q. What's worser than sneks?

A. Komodo dragons with iron teef, that's what.

Komodo dragons are compared to carnivorous dinosaurs for good reason. They are the largest living lizard on the planet. Their large, serrated teeth can tear apart almost any kind of meat, including water buffaloes weighing more than 1,000 pounds.

On Wednesday, scientists announced a discovery that could add to the comparisons: Komodo dragons’ teeth are coated with iron to rip apart their prey. Source: https://wapo.st/3yh5Pn4