"Maybe it's animal-ness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting." — Carol Emshwiller

By DR. CAMERON BARROWS

Saint Patrick is celebrated (in part) in mid-March for allegedly ridding Ireland of all its snakes, although there is no evidence snakes ever occurred on that island. Perhaps no other creatures on earth have been so demonized or revered as snakes. From Genesis to Kaa in Rudyard Kipling’s, “Jungle Book,” snakes have been depicted as sly, sneaky, callous, seductive, knowledgeable, and unscrupulous. If not a demon, then sometimes a benevolent deity; a snake figure was associated with Asclepios, the Greek god of medicine. Symbolized as entwined snakes called a caduceus, Asclepios was believed to be able to cure a patient or a wounded person just by touch. A caduceus is used to this day as a symbol of the medical profession.

In the Ojibwa and Pueblo tribes, the ability of snakes to shed their skins associated them with fertility and new life. The Hopi people see the snake as deeply connected to the underworld. Diné (Navajos) consider them bad omens. Snakes were revered as gods by the Aztecs who worshipped Quetzalcoatl, a large, feathered combination of the quetzal bird and a serpent. This god-like creature otherwise known as the feathered snake brought rain and gave maze/corn to the people. In other cultures, such as the Inca, snakes symbolize the world below or the world of the dead. Locally, the Cahuilla incorporated many aspects of nature in their basket designs, including rattlesnakes. Even without a cultural paradigm dictating how one should think about snakes, people’s feelings about snakes are almost never indifferent: fear, hate, curiosity, fascination, or adoration, either as a single emotion or combined into complex responses. And those feelings are often intense.

So what is a snake? Sometime during the Jurassic Period, between 200-145 million years ago, based on fossils dated to about 167 to 143 million years ago, snakes evolved from lizards, probably as an adaptation for exploiting a fossorial lifestyle chasing other lizards and proto mammals down burrows. 

Considering their genetics, snakes still fit within the lizard family tree, with geckos, skinks, alligator lizards, whiptails, and monitor lizards on one side of snakes, and iguanas and their kin on the other; collectively lizards and snakes are referred to as squamate reptiles, acknowledging their close relationships. Snakes do not have eyelids, whereas almost all lizards do (some geckos also lack eyelids). Although the most obvious snake feature is their lack of legs, the lack of eyelids along with aspects of their jaw and skull structure are the main characteristics distinguishing snakes from more typical lizards. Some snakes, pythons and boas, have vestigial hind leg bones hidden in their muscles. There are also several true lizards, some skinks, and relatives of alligator lizards which also have abandoned legs, but still have eyelids and typical lizard jaws and skulls. The lack of legs has not slowed snakes down. Some snakes, such as racers or coachwhips can beat most humans in a race over uneven ground. Of their lizard cousins, snakes share many characters with monitor lizards and Gila monsters. Those include a forked tongue used for tracking prey by odor, venom (Gila monsters and Komodo dragons), and large heads relative to their slender bodies.

Today there are about 3,000 species of snakes, compared to 7,000 species of more typical lizards, so both groups, the squamate reptiles, have been very successful at diversifying and exploiting the resources available on Earth. Snakes have found their way to the isolated oceanic islands, including the Galapagos and Madagascar. Both snake and lizard species richness peaks in the warmer latitudes, but unlike their lizard cousins, snakes have been able to move further north, to 55˚ north, into central Canada, whereas typical lizards have just barely reached into the southern borders of the southern Canadian provinces. Typical lizards’ diets are varied, from vegetarians, to insectivores, to successful predators of birds and mammals. All snakes are carnivorous, although some eat bird's eggs. Snakes can be important vehicles for controlling rodent populations, populations that if not controlled can sometimes infest places where humans live, damaging food stores and can sometimes be vectors of diseases harmful to people (Hanta virus, plague, rabies). Most often active at night and unnoticed, snakes are important components of healthy ecosystems, even those where people live.

None of this explains the intensity of feelings directed at snakes, while feelings toward their lizard cousins are more often benign or positive. The strong antipathy toward snakes seems to justify some of the most inhumane behavior we humans have directed at any other non-human occupant of our Earth. Every year in the south-central U.S. there are local government-sanctioned rattlesnake roundups. Tens of thousands of rattlesnakes are collected and slaughtered, sometimes skinned alive. 

Elsewhere, on a lesser scale, when a rattlesnake is found on someone’s property, the most common responses are to kill it or have it moved elsewhere. Snakes have extremely good homing instincts. When moved away from its home, a snake will find its way back or die trying. While contrary to what sometimes seems to be an innate fear and loathing of venomous snakes, why not try to let them continue to be part of the world we have colonized? Admittedly a challenge, it does not seem unreasonable to just be more vigilant of where we place our feet and hands when otherwise enjoying the nature around us. 

A few years ago, I found an adult western diamondback rattlesnake in our backyard. While my first impulse was to move it elsewhere, I chose to let it be and watched as it moved away from me into a rock pile I had created for lizards to live and avoid being eaten by the local roadrunner. I never saw the snake again, but to this day I am more careful about where I walk and where I put my hands while creating new rock piles for the lizards. It seems like an easy price for enjoying a more complete natural world in which we live.

Nullius in verba – Go outside, tip your hat to a chuckwalla (and a cactus), and think like a mountain.