Snake Behaviour Threads - Semi-NoSci, Snakes

On 9/6/2003, Chris Forbes-Ewan posted a series of comments, to one of which David Maddern replied:

let me suggest to you that this Fact or Fiction was written by a non-Scientist to whom (like most people) animal=mammal

     > >Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.
    >
    > OK, so how high can the average snake jump? Or a caterpillar, centipede,
    > millipede, coral, sea anemone ...?
    >

snakes can jump, at least  Pseudonaja textilis, the one in my kitchen last summer that got out the window, and there aren't stairs just there

Podargus responded:

Did you see it jump, or are you assuming it did?

Donald Lang added:

I don't see why you need to ask. It is all in the fall of the dice. If you land in the same enclosure as the head of a snake it should make YOU jump. Before you know what has happened you will find yourself treading on its tail. I don't think they can jump much because the best way to avoid their malign influence is to look around for a ladder to climb.

Hoping this will help you in some of the great games in life,

David Maddern replied:

No, I didn't actually see it as I was unsighted as I went into the room for another room(with a waddy, wearing gaiters), from where I had watched it sliding across the kitchen floor I had been making bread and there was a faint imprint of a curve pushed (in dusted flour, if that makes sense) on the bench when I forensically looked over all possible places it could have gone to.
I only sussed out that it wasn't still IN the kitchen when I found the fly screen pushed out at the corner, and I had pushed it in after painters had them off, only days before.

Next day I saw it outside, on the back step do you mind, where it tried to get back inside along the back of the main house structure (imagine a double glass sliding door as part of a lean-to structure) but didn't know about glass, and I in thongs jammed the sliding door twice against it, then it disappeared in a small hole on the top of the footings of this old stone house. It was a bit wounded by then.

Haven't seen it since.
nor looked under the floorboards

Gerald Cairnes wrote:

I doubt that it jumped, more likely it found a corner in which to brace itself and thus climb up, they are pretty resourceful creatures. I suggest you leave it alone and it will take off to another part of its territory soon enough. If you don't threaten it but are moving around regularly it will make the decision to move on without any help. If they don't feel threatened I find they become used to you but keep their distance and come and go regularly checking for mice etc. Removing them just opens up a
vacant territory that will be quickly filled by another.

The under side of our house is not frog proof therefore it is not snake proof either and in the hot weather we have the whole place opened up. We are regularly checked out by snakes from king browns to taipans and I have had them come to my office door look in and then move on to my work benches where there are lots of boxes and places for mice to hide. When they appear like this I look at them, eyeball to eyeball,  then continue typing if that is what I am doing essentially offering no threat. The carpet snakes of which we have few are regular temporary residents and the mice do not hang around for long, we rarely see one, so there are thin picking here and I believe that the other snakes get to know this.

The only snake to break these unwritten rules are a very large green tree snake that knows I have a large tree frog that insists on camping in a corner of my office. I tolerate this frog and its lack of house training because it keeps the cockroaches down and we see very few of those. This tree snake will quickly dive under my desk past me and make for the corner, they are very partial to green tree frogs. I have rescued the frog on three occasions and this is the only green tree snake that I have ever handled without it becoming highly agitated as I transport it outside.

Rod Olsen commented:

concerning your home office visitors:

King Browns?

Taipans???

Have you considered moving interstate - or do you keep the appropriate anti-venenes (sp?) alongside the band-aids in the office first-aid kit?

Country lore (mythology, if you prefer), where I once worked among the daughters & sons of the soil, had it that both of these species were infamous for extremely aggressive males when the need for "nookie" was upon them.

You have a great office location for informal herpetology, otherwise ..........geez!  Still one way to ensure freedom from door-to-door religious or other sales people, I guess.

Gerald, replying to David and Rod:

We established a behaviour culture here more than 20 years ago and the snakes in the territory have come to understand that we are no threat, of course there is always the one that either doesn't know the rules or is a blow in but I suggest that you will sooner or later meet these ones anyway.   I agree it would be preferable to avoid having them around especially when there are kids but we raised our two kids and for a few years our grandchild stayed here also without harm and they know how to behave, good training for future life where they won't perpetuate the hysteria that surrounds these animals. Our grandchildren visit us and sometimes stay and have not had any problems despite seeing a few snakes.

For the first 3 years here we had some 30,000 pineapples, a legacy from the previous owner, and these had been planted too close and worse they grew to around 2.5 metres so picking them was a real problem. In the heat of late January and February with protective clothing it was a real sweat not to be recommended.. During this period of picking there were a large but indeterminate number of snakes in the pineapples hunting the various small mammals including potarroos that found this a nice place to live. When bending down to pick a pineapple constantly we could see the snakes moving just ahead of us, mainly king browns, but not once were we ever threatened. Emotive reactions to snakes tends to colour the perceptions methinks, although I can understand the reaction it is in my view largely a learned one.

I have survived several snake bites in the days when I used to collect for the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland and in all cases the fault was mine. Firstly I was handling the snakes and secondly the bites were half hearted attempts to warn me when I got careless. That did not make the experience any more enjoyable as a couple of times I could easily have done a perish but for the good services of my dear old sadly departed friend Dr. Geoff Middleton of Culcairn at the time. I know what it is like to be bitten, also definitely not to be recommended. I now leave the poisonous ones alone as I developed an acute hypersensitivity to antivenene and I did carry stocks of my own. Until one bad bite knocked  me out initially and when I came too some of my farm friends who were clueless about treatment were feverishly jabbing my arm with the broken top of an antivenene vial trying to inject me!!! As a consequence of this well meaning act I got tetanus as well as envenomation, not a nice experience believe me. It makes one think about where the biggest threats sometimes come from! Just call me indestructible, pollies take note! :-)

Aggressive snakes are a risk but I can honestly say that except when closely cornered I have never been attacked by a snake in the hundreds that I have handled. The incidence of snakes biting without provocation is in reality very low, much lower than any risk taken when driving a car. The snakes most likely to take an aggressive stand are the Taipan and the Eastern Brown but even with these in the vast majority of instances the snake prefers to get away quickly, I have always had to chase the snakes I caught. I did send some images of a Taipan visitor to my parents cottage on  our property, to Barbara for the SM Website, I can't remember but I think she published them. This snake was encountered by a Dutch associate on his own and admitted that he was terrified and the snake did make several lunges at him but he kept his cool and managed to get a couple shots of it. I suggest that the fear and nervousness was a key factor in the aggressive reaction but also acknowledge other influences as Rod notes. I have on occasion shepherded taipans away from the open door when we expected other visitors without incident.

Tiger snakes I found to be "pussy cats" only biting at very close quarters and are very easy to hold by the tail and have them partially climb up themselves to sit and look you in the eye without any excitement at all, somewhere I have one or two photos of tigers in this pose. These shots were taken when I was teaching myself how to handle the snakes and at a time when I had no prior know;ledge of their behavioural characteristic, at that time I used to wrap up amusingly in layers of clothing to avoid accidental bites. Later when I understood them better the extra clothing was simply unnecessary.

The biggest "Pussy Cat" of them all is the Highlands Copper Head. During a muster in the Snowy Mountains as a very new Australian I was plied with all sorts of horrific myths about them from shearers and other hands and set about demonstrating just how quiet these snakes actually were. During a break I collected about 4-5 of these inoffensive creatures and sat downwith them on the ground and with a short stick got them to sit up as group cobra style by gently lifting their heads, non threatening, to the utter amazement of the other stockmen, it was even possible to stroke their heads with a finger, not one made any aggressive move. Alas these were the days before video cameras etc. and today I am too slow and arthritic to take the risks of having to dodge the odd aggressive snake in such a demo. Its a bit like chemistry, know your material properties and you can do lots of things with them. I put a real damper on the mythical stories and wasn't thanked for it.

Podargus responded:

I have no disagreement with what Gerald has said, except perhaps to say that the word 'aggressive is not really appropriate for animals, at least wild animals.  It should only be used to describe some behaviour between members of the same species.  To an animal you are either just part of the environment, a threat, or perhaps something to be eaten.

Animals that have poison as part of their food gathering apparatus are reasonably to be feared perhaps.  However it is true that most snake bites, at least in Australia occur when someone is handling them, or trying to kill or remove them.  In other words they are being threatened.  Brown snakes are in the genus Pseudonaja, meaning pseudo cobra, implying that they flatten their necks as part of the defensive display.  They were named after P nuchalis which does flatten its neck.  Eastern Browns and taipans do not do this, rather they face the threat and sit up and form an S shape.  This is supposed as being an attempt to make themselves appear to occupy a larger area, i.e. appear bigger.  Unfortunately humans when being aggressive to each other also face the opposition and look at them.  So by association browns and taipans are being aggressive.

I might also add that in this pose they really cannot strike.  The elapids strike sideways, the pythons by pulling the front of the body back in a horizontal S shape and then straightening.  The only muscles of note that snakes have is along either side of the backbone, so simple physics says that these are the only ways that they can strike.

Similarly it is hard to see how they could jump.

George Ikners enquired:

I once went on a tour of various parts of the Noosa area and the gentleman taking us around was quite adamanet that he had seen king browns come out of long grass beside loosely defined track to as it were have a go at someone.

Is that fact or fiction?

George Ikners  answered:

Like a child looking at an adult. I had a friend once who was quite tall.  When confronted by an angry dog he would lift both arms in the air and wave them around.

The extra height certainly worked the few times I saw him do it. As a greyhound trainer in a former life (I am now a lawyer) I used the tactic a bit when trying to ward off yapping dogs.

Greyhounds of course would have to be the most placid of dogs, so I never needed any tactic on them.

I will leave it to others to try it on snakes.

Once as a young boy at Kurrajong an older boy caught a snake and it died. We all followed him to a local ant's nest where he left it. There was very little left the next day.

David Maddern added:

It seems to me that the two weeks when tiger snakes will go for you in Sthn Tas is a classic case of aggression.  To the meaning of that word the reason they do that is inconsequential.  It is to protect young and nests.  "Any offensive action" Macquarie is a definition.

Surely almost any predator/prey action is aggressive/defensive.  I don't think the word carries a moral overtone.

Podargus replied to Kevin:

I am tempted to point to your first phrase, but of course I would not do such a thing;-).  I have already made comments on the reliability of country folk.  I will qualify that by saying their observations are usually accurate, but not so their conclusions.

I have already explained why the brown you stumbled near 'reared'.

I am perplexed as to why you think tiger snakes are into attacking things larger than themselves.

Only the largest (overseas) pythons are large enough to view a human as food.  Brown snakes are primarily rat and mouse eaters.  Tiger snakes frog eaters.  It makes no sense for them to bite something as large as a human unless it feels in extreme danger, and even here it will mostly not avail them any real benefit as you have more than ample time to dispose of the snake.

and to George:

> I once went on a tour of various parts of the Noosa area and the gentleman
> taking us around was quite adamanet that he had seen king browns come out of
> long grass beside loosely defined track to as it were have a go at someone.
> Is that fact or fiction?

I think Gerald and I have pretty well answered the question.  I have only been to Noosa twice.  After the last time 3 or 4 years ago I have no intention of repeating the experience.  In other words I don't know the area but I doubt King Browns are to be found there.  By the way King Browns are in the same genus as black snakes, they just happen to be brown coloured, and big.

On a lighter note.  Some thirty years ago I was on the way back from attending a meeting of the Australian Society of Herpetologists, held at Tibooburra.  I stopped to catch a king brown and within seconds a bloke with movie camera appeared.  He was the only car I saw between Tibooburra and Wanaarining, over two hundred kilometres

and to David:

My dictionary in its various definitions implies its use for humans and also implies a moral component.  Certainly in biology it is associated with mating and territories.  In other words intra specific.  See also agonistic, a word that encompasses aggression, posturing, appeasement, flight etc..

The problem in animal behaviour is to avoid anthropomorphism.

<snip>
>The first thing I usually do when giving a talk on snakes is to get the
>audience to lie down on the floor on their belly's and have a snakes eye
>view.