Welcome to episode seventy nine of Get Out Alive, a bio weekly podcast put
animal tax why they happen, and how we can avoid them. I'm your
host, Ashley, and before I introduce the topic of today's episode, as
a thank you to all of you who leave five star reviews, I'll be
reading one each episode, and this week's review comes from Elijah CM and is
as follows. I absolutely love this podcast. I started listening two weeks ago.
It's my new go to while working. The information you guys put out
and the guest speakers you have are absolutely enthralling. It's awesome to be able
to listen to something I, as well as so many others, are passionate
about, and to hear you guys put it all out in such great taste
is amazing. As an aspiring conservationist slash biologist slash ecologist slash zoologists, have
no idea what path I want to take yet, well, this podcast helps
gives me insight to different fields that are available. Thank you guys so much
for the content. I look forward to continue to be a listener. Then
this is a great episode for you, Elijah, because me and today's guests
talk a lot about research that needs to be done in a up and coming
field that is super exciting that I wish I could go back and go into.
Also, thank you to all of our patrons at patreon dot com who
wrote in questions for today's guest and you if you have not already, you
can also join us on Patreon and get bonus episodes, add free episodes,
and do things like ask our experts questions. Today's episode is all about rattlesnakes,
how often they bite, how dangerous bites are, and other myths and
facts about them. And months ago, I had someone write into me on
Instagram, ann Alie Nelson, and she suggested that we talk about rattle lists
rattlesnakes in Texas, and this is something that we do touch on. So
we get into a lot of different things, and we especially talk about venom
too. But I'm so excited for you all to hear today's guest and about
the very exciting research project that has going on right now that you all can
be a part of. From your couch at home, wherever you have access
to the internet, you can be a part of this research. So,
without further ado, let's get into the interview. My name is Emily Taylor.
My pronouns are she Hers, and I am from I was born originally
in California, but I moved around my whole life, so I don't really
have a home base, to be honest, and I'm currently a professor of
biology at cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. Nice And how did
you get into reptiles? Were you always a reptile lover? Did it just
kind of fall on your plate? No? I was not one of those
kids who ran around chasing scaly things. My love for reptiles came a little
bit later in life. When I was about twenty years old, I took
a class at UC Berkeley called Natural History of the Vertebrates where every Saturday we
would go out all day either bird watching or looking for amphibians, or trapping
rodents, or looking for snakes and lizards. And that was definitely my favorite
part. And it was a king snake that my professor found under a log
and handed to me. That kind of really was my gateway animal into patology.
And after that I got involved in undergraduate research and then that was it.
You were just hooked hooked on snakes ever since twenty five years counting now.
Nice. So what are some of the studies that you have done,
like post undergrad my research is mainly focused in physiology, so primarily on lizards
like bluebelly lizards called western fence lizards, and then especially on rattlesnakes, and
we've done a lot of work ranging from endochronology, so how hormones impact their
physiology, to thermal ecology, so looking at how climate change may impact these
animals' ability to function thermally, and then more recently hydric physiology. So we're
really interested in how drought in the Western United States could be impacting lizards and
snakes. But I think one of the overarching themes of my work is also
community science and outreach, So we do a lot of work that involves input
from the public and people help us collect our data, which is really exciting.
Yeah. So have you always I mean, the focus of today's episode
is rattlesnakes. Have you grown up around rattlesnakes. Do you have a lot
of like personal experience with them outside of research or is it just like research
base that you've interacted with them. I never saw ratlesnake as a kid.
My first rattlesnake that I saw was in college when I was in the class
and we went on a field trip down to Palm Springs area and I saw
a most beautiful red diamond rattlesnake crossing the road and I was just in awe
of that animal. And so all my ratl snake experience, which has become
extremely extensive, has been since then, both studying rattlesnakes for my PhD at
Arizona State University to now going on almost twenty years of working with them and
studying them at cal Poly. But it hasn't just been research. I have
a consulting company that helps people coexist with rattlesnakes peacefully and safely here in the
central California coast. I teach rattlesnake safety classes all over California. So I
do a lot of work on the kind of human wildlife conflict sides of things
with rattlesnakes in addition to the research that I do, and I mean,
we also have to talk about your new book that as we're recording this came
out a few days ago. So please tell us about your new book.
Thank you. I'm so excited. I just had my book launch party yesterday
and it was awesome. I gave a talk on the secret lives of snakes
associated with my book, California Snakes and How to Find Them. So it
is a not really a field guide. There are accounts of each species,
but instead of having just scientific information and like scale counts and ranges, it's
more stories about each snake and beautiful photographs that my colleagues have taken and graciously
allowed me to use in their book. So it's really good for someone who
is becoming interested in snake hunting. So maybe for like a teenager or someone
visiting the state, or even an experienced herpetologists will like it because of the
beautiful photos and the funny stories, and so it's kind of an ode to
snakes and how to find them in the wild. I'll tell you something,
there's a lot of gatekeeping and herpetology where someone who's interested in learning how to
find snakes will ask someone can they come with them? Or where do they
go to find them? And people rightfully won't tell them where to go to
find snakes because if you give away your secret spots, they might get ruined
by somebody, whether it's on purpose or not. So people have to learn
on their own. And the book is just full of how to's, how
to find snakes by flipping pieces of tin, by hiking, by road cruising
at night, a lot of discussion of the ethics of should we pick up
snakes or not? And the short answer is sometimes, but be judicious about
it. Right. We love to hold snakes in our hands so that we
can see them up close, and that's something I'll never argue with. But
sometimes if we actually just let them go about their business, we can see
really really cool things happening. And so that's what the book is about.
And it has counts of over fifty snakes in California, including some introduced ones,
but mostly our wonderful native snakes, and it's just a big celebration of
snakes. Have you yourself ever been bitten by a rattlesnake in your line of
research? Yes, I have. I was bitten when I was a graduate
student in the year two thousand, about two years after I started working with
ratile snakes, and it was devastating. Not so much medically. I had
all rail snake bites or emergencies, but I had a relatively low severity bite
and I recovered after one night in ICEEU and fifteen viiles of anti venom,
which is pretty basic bite. But my ego has never recovered. I was
one of the ral snake biologists who was a female, and of course I
got bitten right away. I'm just kidding. My ego has definitely recovered.
But what happened was it actually really impacted me because it changed the way that
I see ratl snakes, you know, and the snake was defending itself I
was working with in the lab. It was a bite to the hand.
I spent all day every day handling rail snakes to get blood samples and et
cetera. And I made a mistake. It's always a mistake of the person
really, because the snake is just defending itself. What it did was it
really dictated to me new methods for snake safety. And so that's why I
teach snake safety classes to construction workers, military personnel, biologists, you know,
community members all over California. At now is how to safely, like
uber, safely catch that ratle snake and remove it from because it turns out
that killing rattlesnakes is actually really dangerous too. We'll get bitten a lot when
I try to kill them. So I have learned now, partly because of
the mistakes I made when I was a young young adult, how to be
exceptionally safe. And that's something I'm really proud of and that I really enjoy
spreading around our beautiful state of California. Nice. So, speaking of the
snakes in California and the snakes in US as a whole, so can we
break down the different species of rattlesnakes we have in the US, and then
how many of those are venomous? Are they all venomous? How many venomous
snakes do we have going on in California and the US as a whole.
That was a lot to throw at you, But I might love talking about
venomus snakes. This is what I do, so I'm happy to answer your
question. So taxonomists argue a lot about what's the species versus a subspecies,
So I'll could you kind of a general answer, there's depending on your philosophy
of species, there's about twenty or maybe a few more species of rettlesnakes in
the United States, since seven of those occur in California, and then there's
a few more additional venomous snakes, So there's a two species of copperhead and
two species of cotton mouths or water moccasins, those are the same thing,
and then a few species of coral snakes. So those comprise all the venomous
snakes, maybe about thirty or so in the United States. Cool. So
I guess to backtrack a little bit too to stuff that you're working on,
because I don't want to get past this. Can you tell people a little
bit about the work that you were just doing before this week that we're recording
and where people can tune in to that work that you were doing, Ashley,
I am so excited. This is something I have been building up to
for so long and I just can't believe that it's happening. So people can
go to retlcam dot org, which is the website for project ratlecam, which
is our major community science project with live streaming on rattlesnake dens. And so
we're using this as an opportunity to learn about what snakes do when you don't
walk up to them and bother them. Right, Their behavior changes when they're
scared of people walking up to them. So we can actually study what rattlesnakes
do in these communal dens with ay bask out in the front of them.
The pregnant females will stay there and they'll have their babies this summer and we
can watch them taking care of their babies, which is something really interesting that
rattlesnakes do. A lot of people don't know that, and the kind of
history of this, the brief history is that we put these cameras, these
live streaming cameras. The first ever one's on snake dens outside of a small
snake den and communal nest. It's called a rookery in California three years ago.
I've been watching that ever since. It streams live to YouTube. People
who are watching on YouTube can ask the controller, hey, can you pan
or zoom that camera in? Because it's not just a static camera. We
can control it and we can follow animals around, so the person really feels
like they're they're watching and part of it with the animals. And we just
recently last week in Colorado went out and installed a really high tech, advanced
new live streaming camera system and a prairie rattlesnake mega den. And a mega
den is a word that we developed so we can say it's whatever we want
to say, but it's defined as a huge den, one that's full of
dozens or hundreds or maybe even thousands of individuals. And so pretty soon here
we're just optimizing the settings. But any day now, sometime in mid May
twenty twenty four, we are going to make it live on redelcam dot org
where people can just watch twenty four hours a day. It has infrared at
night, so we can see what's visiting the dens at night, wo we
can see what the snakes are doing all the time, and just for a
sneak peek. We were there last week for five days. This is in
high elevation northern Colorado, and we got snowed out two of the days,
but on the other three days that the snakes were out because it was sunny,
which is crazy, there's like snow all around them, but they're out
in the sun. We saw just piles of rattlesnakes and then even bigger piles
of western terrestrial garter snakes that hibernate with the rettlesnakes, and we noticed some
really interesting social behaviors between the two species that we haven't really been able to
see before, so it's just a hint of what we'll be able to do
with this live stream. Nice. Yeah. So I have patrons that wrote
in questions from patreon dot com, and one of them was like, I
don't have a question, but I'm so excited for this live cam, Like
this is gonna be great. So people are into it, and I before
we start recording, we were talking about the shirt that I'm wearing, which
has snakes on it, and I forgot to tell you I have a rattlesnake
tattoo that I got specifically, I mean, I have a whole sleeve of
animals that people don't really like, so I got a rattlesnake tattoo because I
was like, they're great mothers and there's so many reasons to like them.
But I feel like the rattlesnakes make great moms, and like they often have
young that like follow them around stuff. This is supposed to be like a
timber rattlesnake, So I'm not sure if that's true for all rattlesnakes, But
that's like my little tidbit of like, hey, I know that you might
not like them, but here's a few reasons to like them. So I
also use any excuse I can get to talk about them. Well, that's
really awesome and it's intuitive. So a couple things from that that you'll love.
Most of the research that has been done on young following the adults to
their dens was done on timber rattlesnakes, so you're right on there with the
species choice. Beautiful tattoo by the way, thanks. And the second thing
is that you basically just propose a hypothesis that telling people that rattlesnakes take care
of their babies and they had these social systems can actually change people's minds about
rattlesnakes. And we tested that hypothesis in a study. It was just published
a couple weeks ago in plus one and sure enough it's true. So people,
especially women, react really strongly to that, and it can improve the
perception of retlesnakes. We also looked at ecosystem services, so telling people that
rettle snakes help control rodent populations help prevent the spread of disease that was actually
even more effective, but primarily among like older people and men. So it's
just an interesting study because people can read it and find out what the best
strategies for outreach are it depends on who you're talking to. Yeah, yeah,
to customize it, right, which is why podcasts are great because we
can lay out so many facts that will appeal to so many different people.
That's right. So speaking of that, one of our patrons, Tarn,
actually had a great question, which is, what are some common misconceptions about
rattlesnakes? How much time do you have? I know that could be the
whole episode, honestly, yeah, it really could be. I do a
talk sometimes called Mythbusting Rettlesnakes, and it's like a whole hour and a half
long just going through ralsnake myths because I like to say that everything you've heard
about rattlesnakes is not true. There's usually some sort of tiny grain of truth,
but then it's blown out of proportion and the majority of it's not true.
So the most common myth, which is an obvious one, is that
ral snakes want to bite people or dogs. They don't. They want to
use their venom for their own prey, and they are only ever dividing biting
to defend themselves. So the idea of calling rattlesnakes aggressive is really just a
misnomer. They are defensive and understanding that you and your podcast do a good
job of saying, even though we say animal attacks, many of these attacks
are defensive attacks. Of course, so that's really true of rattlesnakes. They
don't actually attack people, They defend themselves. That's one the most widespread myth
about rattlesnakes is that the babies are more dangerous than the adults. And this
myth comes in many forms, everything from they can't control their venom, or
they interject more venom, or they're more likely to bite, or etc.
Etc. None of that's true. So baby ral snakes can control their venom,
they do not inject as much of it as adults, and the grain
of truth is that their venom can be more toxic drop per drop, but
that's completely irrelevant when the adults inject so much more venom. So, in
fact, the snake bite severity scores, which is like a medical conglomerate score
of how severe the bite was, is higher for adult snakes than baby snakes.
I'll do one more myth just in the nature of time, and that
one is that there's a myth going around now that rattlesnakes have started to evolve
to not rattle or to lose their rattle comes in both of those flavors,
and that's not true either. So the idea here goes that, oh,
people are going to kill ratle snakes when they see them. So if a
rattle snake is less likely to rattle, then it doesn't get killed and it
passes on the genes for not rattling to its babies, whereas the ones that
rattle give themselves a way they get killed. So that's a very interesting hypothesis,
really hard to test, but we have no evidence for it. And
you get this confirmation bias where someone has heard that and then they see a
rat snake that doesn't rattle, which spoiler, rattlesnakes usually don't rattle. They
just don't. So if you see one that doesn't rattle, you're like,
oh, look see they're losing their ability to rattle, and it's just not
true. Yeah, we have no evidence for that. Rattlesnakes do not want
to draw attention to themselves. Their first line of defense is camouflage, and
they only are going to rattle if they feel like you've invaded their space.
So there you have it. Those are some common myths that we can bust
right away. Yeah, that was perfect because the next question was from Robin
who asked which rattlesnake rattles the loudest, and then I added on to it
and said, why do they rattle? Yeah, really good question. So
I don't know the first answer, which was which one rattles the loudest.
I don't think anyone has ever studied that. That would be a really cool
like Master's thesis. I would suggest that it's probably gonna be one of the
bigger rattlesnakes. So the bigger the snake, the bigger the rattle, and
the louder the noise. So something like a Western diamondback rattlesnake and Eastern diamondback
rattlesnake, timber rattlesnake, those are the three biggest ones that occur in the
United States. And rattlesnake that has a high body temperature and that is very
very threatened, we'll have a very loud buzz of a rattle. Tiny little
rattlesnakes have this like high pitch Z because of their rattles are so small.
And it's actually crazy because some older people who've lost that frequency can't hear them
rattle. Oh boy, I know anyway, So rattlesnakes rattle as a warning.
Rattlesnakes rattle when they are scared, when they feel threatened because they see
us or predators or livestock or dogs that are about to step on them or
sniffing them as threats. They see these big, giant, you know,
warm blooded animals coming at them, in our case, hairless apes coming at
them as something that is going to kill them. And you know, rightfully
so because oftentimes that does happen. So the rattle is a sign that the
rattlesnake is scared. There's actually a really interesting thing that happened in an outreach
event that my friend attended recently where they were talking to kids about rattlesnakes and
they had a live rattlesnake. It was rattling away. One of the kids
in the audience looked at that rattlesnake very thoughtfully and pensively and said, you
know, that rattle sound is not one of forrociousness. It's the sound of
the rattlesnakes screaming. Oh my god, I get like shivers whenever I hear
that. Because I think people don't see it that way. People see it
as like a sign of aggression, when really it's just a terrified rattlesnake very
nicely telling you to back away and then there'll be no problems. Yeah.
Oh wow, that is a really smart little kid. Jeez. I know
I want like that kid to come to college and be my student. Yeah
righth yeah, my gosh. And I think this is a good point to
talk about too. So here in New England we have milk snakes and many
people don't know that milk snakes are not venomous, but they do rattle as
like a psych out for getting you to stay away from them. So are
there other snakes out there that mimic that rattle without having the venom to back
it up. This is such a good question actually, because people argue a
lot about whether we can actually call that behavior mimicry. So let me explain.
So, all snakes, or most snakes will shake their tail when they're
stressed out, and so this goes back evolutionary long before the split between all
these other species of snakes and ratl snakes. In other words, the shaking
of the tail when a snake is stressed is basal, and then the lineage
that led to rattlesnakes just evolved this morocca on the end of it that could
make a lot of noise. So all these snakes do it when they're stressed.
So the question is does that mean it's a mimic. Probably not,
because it evolved beforehand. At the same time, there are some species,
especially ones that look a lot like rattlesnakes, Like out here are gopher snakes
that shake their tail in the brush and also spread their head wide to make
it look more triangular shaped. They even have this special tissue inside their throat
that can cause them to make a loud, hissing noise that sounds kind of
like a rattle. So those snakes are definitely rattlesnake mimics that have benefited over
evolutionary time by a hawk or maybe a badger or something seeing them and thinking
that's not worth it today to a spicy noodle. Today, I'm gonna avoid
that spicy meal and maybe go and so they benefited that way. Unfortunately,
it also means that they sometimes are per secuted more by people. People see
a snake that's shaking its tail, I think rattlesnake, but really it's the
presence or absence of the rattle on the tail that indicates whether it's a rattlesnake
or not not the shaking of the tail gotcha very cool. So besides the
rattle, obviously rattlesnakes have venom to back up their bite. So can we
talk a bit about what is the purpose of venom? And also is venom
the same in every venomous snake or does it differ by snake. Sure,
so venom evolved to kill and maybe tenderize prey depending on the species. So
there are many, many species of venomous snakes throughout the world and a huge
diversity of venoms. And I will talk a little bit about just about the
diversity even within rattlesnakes in the United States, which have been heavily studied.
So rattlesnake venom tends to consist primarily of toxins, multiple different types of proteins
that will kill prey by, for example, interfering with blood coagulation or blood
clotting, so that this mass dose of venom into something like a mouse causes
it to kind of bleed to death immediately. There's also some in some populations
of ral snakes, there's some neurotoxins that will interfere with the ability of that
rodent to be able to breathe, and it will suffocate lots of different things
that are in these snake venoms. Also, ral snake venoms have these myotoxins
which basically start to kind of break down muscle. And whether or not that's
actually helping to kind of pre digest the food or to prevent this giant meal
the snake eventually swallows from kind of rotting inside the belly, we don't really
know for sure, but we know that it's all contributing to what they're eating.
And then secondarily, the venom is used for defense. So the reason
that rat snake venom is so toxic, and this is probably something that's true
for snakes around the world because it's like way more toxic than it needs to
be to kill like a lab mouse, is that actually in the wild,
the prey that have co evolved with the rettlesnakes and so a lot of prey
actually have some sort of resistance to rettlesnake venoms. So we should stop short
of calling it immune, but we can say resistance. Sometimes they may survive
a bite, and so through natural selection, if you have a prey that
is largely resistant to the real snake venom, it will survive a bite,
and it will pass on its genes for resistance to its offspring, and then
through random mutation, a retl snake develops a more toxic venom, and then
that rattle snake is able to kill and get more food and so on.
So you get this co evolutionary arms race where the venom gets more toxic as
the prey becomes more resistant. And that's why people who did not co evolve
with rettle snakes and therefore do not have resistance are suffer so dramatically when they
are invenomated by a red snake. And I'm sure're going to talk about snake
bites to people later, so I'll hold off on that, but for now.
Yeah, even within just rettlesnakes in California as an example, the venom
varies dramatically among snakes, by species, among populations, among individuals within that
population, and even within an individual as it ages, the venom changes dramatically,
so you can't really make You can make generalizations, but you can't make
specific predictions based on any one part of the venom. It's really cool This
whole field I've been discussing is called venom ecology, somewhat new field. I
know. It's just amazing, isn't it. I really want to get into
it. Like I don't have really any background in hormones or anything like that,
but like the just studying venom sounds so cool to me. I would
love to do that. It's so neat. It's one of the things that
I think about sometimes where I'm like, if I could go back to grad
school, maybe it would have been cool to study venom. I'm like,
no, I like the path I took, but that would have been really
cool. I do have some studies that we've done with venom. It's mostly
been with colleagues of mine study venom where we've collaborated together, but I'm not
a venom scientist per se myself. Yeah, we are going to get into
later in this conversation about like what you should do if you're bitten by a
venomous snake, because I know that's a question so many people have for us.
So continuing on this little bit, Kim, one of our patrons asked,
is there any animal that is immune to a rattlesnake bite which you kind
of just answered, but could you name some of those animals that are like
in that arms with rattlesnakes against their venom. I love this question so much
because it really shows that we are just starting to research this. When I
say we, it's the royal we, I'm not researching what my colleagues are.
So this has all been really new science, this field of venom ecology
to be able to understand that certain prey species of rettlesnakes and also predators of
retle snakes who have co evolved with them for millions of years, have developed
types of resistance, even in the sense that we could call it immunity.
Immunity implies like fully being fully immune, which is probably not usually the case.
I'm not gonna say never, but here's a few examples of animals that
are maybe highly resistant to rattlesnake venom who could survive a bite. Predators of
rettlesnakes, like the Californic kingsnake, are highly resistant to rettlesnake venom. Oh,
I know, it's so cool. So there's been just a couple of
studies showing that, and then we've all many of us have observed it,
you know, I've seen rettlesnakes bite king snakes and they're tolly fine. But
there's a currently there's a graduate student who is really tackling this to study howt
works other predators like possums and potentially badgers, although I don't think people have
actually studied whether badgers are resistant because you have to get a blip sample from
a badger, which is really not easy, but anyway, so whereas other
predators like hawks and owls are not resistant, and so they will actually just
rip the head off of the rattlesnake before they take the body away to eat
it, showing that they kind of know where the spicy end is and then
some prey. So a lot of the work has been done on California ground
squirrels and Northern Pacific rattlesnakes showing that there's a high resistance from Californic ground squirrels.
Those little ground squirrels are resistant to rat snake bites. It means that
an adult might survive a bite, not always, but it might survive,
but only to the venoms of the rattlesnakes from their population. So if you
inject them with venom from a population elsewhere in California. They're not resistant to
those, so it really shows that coevolution. Let's see what else can I
think of. I know that there's a number of studies ongoing on other prey
items like wood rats and other animals, showing that it seems to be really
common that there is resistance to the snakes the snake predator's venom in many many
prey. It's just a really early burgeoning area of study. So anyone out
there who is interested in venom and who wants to go to grad school should
consider looking into the labs of some of these venom scientists because there's so much
left to do. Yeah. Oh, that's so exciting. I love when
I talk to biologists and they're like, actually, no one studied this,
because I'm like, get out there and do it, please, someone do
it. Yeah, yep. So I guess a question I have based off
of that is do you know how anti venom is made? And is anyone
looking at these animals as a way to like help humans become more resistant to
rattlesnake venom. So I can tell you the answer to the first question.
The second one is more difficult because I am not a specialist in the biomedical
side of it. I certainly can provide some general answers to some of your
questions about the biomedical aspect, but I'm more of an expert on the rattlesnake
biology itself. So anti venom would which is just such an amazing, amazing
medicine, is produced by injecting venoms from snakes that are venomous obviously into large
animals like horses or sheep, and so don't worry, it's not like they
inject a ton of the venom. It's a tiny amount of venom. And
then those large animals are not really affected by that venom because they're huge,
but their immune systems recognize those proteins and produce antibodies against those and these animals
immune systems are so much more advanced than any lab technology we currently have at
being able to produce any bodies against all of those proteins and that complex cocktail
that is a venom. And then after they have produced as antibodies, the
scientists will draw the blood from them, purify it, and basically do some
extra steps, and then that is anti venom. And so it's anti venom
is going to be kept usually for most including rettlesnake anti venoms, which there's
two kinds in the United States available, will be kept refrigerated at hospitals and
is delivered via IV by an er physician. So this is not something that
people can buy and carry around with them on a backpacking trip or anything like
that. So it's highly effective. The red anti venoms in the United States
will cure almost any red snake bite if the person gets treatment really soon.
And in addition, I should say they're not just for rattlesnakes. So all
pit vipers in North America, which includes the rettlesnakes, the copper heads,
and the cotton mouth all of their venoms are used multiple species of retle snakes,
and then those cotton mouths and copper heads are all used, and so
the anti venom is effective against all bites from those organisms. Oh cool,
that's awesome. Yeah. This makes me think of all the people who have
venomous snakes from other parts of the world, and I always wonder, like,
if you have I don't know, like a black mamba or something like
how do you know I don't know if you know the answer this question,
but like, if you have a venomous snake from another part of the world.
Have you got to like contact your hospital and like make sure they have
the anti venom or you just like gotta hope you don't get bit because there's
nothing similar to that venom around. Yeah, so in most states, having
exotic venomous snakes is illegal, but it certainly is legal in some states,
and furthermore, some people just keep these snakes illegally. Is unfortunately a growing
problem because what usually happens is that, especially with the people who are keeping
them illegally, they're not very likely to be doing the responsible thing, which
is actually stocking and keeping and maintaining their own supply of anti venom. That's
what zoos do, and zoos keep anti venom in case one of their reptile
keepers is in'tvenomated in an accent, and so the problem arises that if someone
is invenomated by their pet cobra or black mamba, like you said, then
oftentimes they will go to the hospital and they'll immediately begin searching the physicians for
anti venom anywhere in the country that can be flown in for that person,
and of course a lot of times it comes from the zoos, and then
that puts the zoo keepers at risk because you're taking the anti venom away from
the responsible parties of the zoos. So it is a really big problem.
People definitely should not be keeping those animals unless they have the proper permits and
are following the proper procedures of being responsible for their own medical care for sure.
Yeah. Hell yeah. So moving back towards wild snakes, So one
of our patrons, John asked, I know that venom producing creatures can and
often do limit the amount of venom injected due to the sheer amount of energy
it takes to produce the venom. So how often do quote dry bites occur
where no venom is injected. Yeah, this is an awesome question too.
So figuring out how many times dry bites occur in nature is really hard,
yep, right, because I mean, how do you study that? Just
think about it. So there's been estimates that have ranged, you know,
from just a few Mainly it's it's pretty rare a few percent of cases in
predatory bytes because the snake, especially something like a rel snake, it just
sits there in weights, and it's so rare for something like a rodent to
run by. They're gonna make sure they envenomate that rodent, they're not going
to try to, you know, hedge their bets. So dry bites are
pretty rare in nature for predation. We think they're a little more common in
defensive bytes, like to people's ankles. So about studies have shown across snakes
that are about ten ten percent of venomous snake bites in the United States are
dry bites. And there's a lot of misinformation about what a dry bite is.
A dry bite is defined as the fangs have penetrated the skin and then
but there's no venom, so literally you're having no reaction to the venom,
no swelling, no effects on the blood, nothing. So some people say
that a mild and venomation is a dry bite without swelling, et cetera,
and that's not true. So one thing about the idea of the venom is
that there's been one study on how much energy it costs on rettlesnakes to produce
their venom, and it was fascinating because on the one hand, they showed
that it actually takes surprisingly little energy to make that venom. However, however,
your patron is absolutely correct in the sense that the venom is highly valuable
because if they were to expend all of their venom, then they wouldn't have
it anymore for a few days, and that could result in lost opportunity.
So a prey item could come by and they wouldn't be able to kill it
because they didn't have enough venom, and then that would be a major energetic
cost. Yeah. Right, So rattlesnakes and other snakes do meter their venom.
They bite, and they only inject part of their venom. This is
again true of baby rattlesnakes too, and if they were to bite over and
over again in succession, then usually each bite would have less and less and
less venom and it would kind of peter down to being a very small amount.
But the only way to have a rat snake completely get rid of all
of its venom is when people are milking them and they kind of squeeze the
venom glands and really just get it all out naturally, That probably wouldn't quite
happen, and then it just takes a couple of weeks for the snake to
regenerate full venom stores after that. Yeah, and how often did they have
amas? This probably depends on those species, but like how often did they
have to eat. You're gonna be shocked by this answer. So it definitely
depends on species. But when you're looking at rattlesnakes, which are low energy
specialists. This is actually a study that one of my graduate students, Haley
Krow, did for her master's thesis at cal Poly. She looked at these
rattlesnakes with their incredibly low metabolic rates and used data from temperature data logger that
we had in rattlesnakes here in central California and their metabolic rates based on their
mass and to just plug and shrug, you can get this estimate of how
much they need. And we did it in terms of California ground squirrels,
so their main prey. We had to estimate how many calories were in a
California ground squirrel. It was a fun, fun story, never mind on
that. And then so the crazy answer is that it's about one per year.
Ground squirrel is all they need. Now there's a caveat to that,
because that's just to fuel their basal metabolism. You know, if rattlesnakes are
crawling around a lot, or especially female rattlesnakes that need to make babies,
which is incredibly energetically expensive. That costs a lot more, but just a
really small amount is all they need. Now they will eat more, right,
and they'll get fatter and they'll grow. But right now, this summer,
we're actually doing an interdisciplinary study with some statistics students and faculties at cal
Poly where we're going to be modeling rattlesnake energetic needs through the entire United States,
using data sets from all of my colleagues, and looking at how climate
change will impact rattlesnake energy budget. It's which I'm really excited about. That's
so exciting. It's great that there's so much good research to dude being done.
That's awesome. It's time for a quick ad break, but once we
come back, we'll talk more about rattlesnakes, doctor Taylor. Okay, So,
Macie, one of our patrons asked, how do rattlesnake bites affect animals,
more specifically dogs? And I didn't know this existed, but what does
the rattlesnake vaccine do for dogs? Well, rattlesnake bites to dogs and also
cats and livestock, especially small livestock. It is a medical emergency. And
that's because just like us humans. You know, dogs and cats did not
evolve with rattlesnakes. I mean sometimes they might actually have some level of partial
resistance because of their ancestry, you know, with like wolves and wildcats that
may have evolved eating ratl snakes, but they're definitely not resistant. And there's
a lot of deaths due to snake bite. A lot more dogs get bit
in the United States every year by rattlesnakes than people do. Something about one
thousand or so rattlesnake bites out of eight thousand total venomous snake bites in the
United States to people, and there's probably like thirty thousand at least railshack bights
to dogs. Yeah, rail snakes are copper heads, cotton mouth I should
say. Lots of dogs are bitten, wow, and so they swell up.
It's incredibly painful. People should if their dog gets bitten, they should
immediately remove the collar to avoid problems with swelling around the neck, and they
need to rush the dog to the emergency veterinarian who has anti venom available just
like our just like us. It's a different brand, but it's the same
sort of thing, and the anti venom is pretty effective, so most dogs
who can get treatment right away, their lives can be saved. But I
will say that the treatment has changed a lot in recent years based on studies
that people have done. So there's been actual studies showing what works and what
doesn't work in terms of treating dogs and cats, and a lot of veterinarians
out there went to school before some of these studies were done, and so
some of them may actually not know some of the current methods. And we
see that there's a lot of drugs that are given, like steroids and benadryl,
which are actually not appropriate it for snake bite because the swelling that happens
for snake bite is not mediated via histamine for example, that venadryl would help.
And so in addition, there's this vaccine which there's no evidence that it
works, so people should not get the real snake vaccine. There's actually evidence
that it can actually sensitize your dog so that if it did get bitten after
it had the vaccine, they can have an allergic reaction. So all this
information that I just told you I learned from the nonprofit National Snake Bite Support
and I would strongly recommend that you're listeners who are interested in snake bite prevention,
treatment, et cetera. Join the Facebook group called National Snake Bite Support
because it's not just any old Facebook group, it's a nonprofit. And the
reason we're on Facebook is because they can link easily to people. So if
someone is bitten, or if their dog is bitten, they can post on
there and right away be connected with these medical or veterinary toxicologists who will kind
of cut through the bs and say this is exactly what you should and shouldn't
do, which is basically, don't do anything. Don't do anything. Don't
do it. No tourniqueits no cutting and sucking, nothing, just go to
doctor. I'm getting ahead of myself. This was supposed to be a pets
and I'm talking about people. That's okay, So I will hold off and
we can talk about that when the time comes. Perfect. Yeah, we
have a little bit more in animals. So Patty asked, I've heard that
when some venomous snakes bite an animal and then that animal dies, if another
animal comes to scavenge on the carcass, they may also get affected by the
venom. Is that true and is it true of rattlesnakes. Okay, So
I don't know the answer to this question. I have never heard of that,
and so I don't want to say it's not true because I could be
wrong. I do want to say that to me, at least, when
it comes to rattlesnakes, it sounds like it sounds improbable, and I will
say I'll explain my reasoning at least, and then we can look and see
if that's true other snakes too. So a venom has to be injected,
whereas a poison has to be ingested. And this venoms are made of proteins
that our stomach would break down, or an animal stomach would break down.
So if let's say that an animal gets injected with venom and it dies,
and before the rattle snake eat it, some hot comes and picks up the
mouse and eats it. That mouse goes into its stomach where those venom proteins
get digested. So, in other words, the venom being ingested can't hurt
the prey. It would have to be injected into the bloodstream. You can't
hurt the predator. Sorry, So that's why I think it could be improbable.
Now, whether there's an exception to this. I don't know, so
I think it'd be really interesting to look into that. Yeah, so John
once again asked, is it often that animals as big as like a bison
or something like a grizzly might get killed by in venomation? So obviously they
wouldn't be the likely target for being eaten by a snake, but like if
they were to get bitten, we were talking kind of about like horses and
stuff like that. They're so big, But could venom kill something like a
bison or a grizzly. This is a good, great question. There's not
a lot of data on it, again because you know, you can't it's
unethical. You can't go out and just inject these animals with venom to see
what happens. So a lot of it is based on just observations over the
past, which suggests that no, it's not very likely that these large animals
would die from a snake bite. It's probably true that bison were regularly and
venomated right as they walked through the grasslands of North America. There's probably ral
snakes sitting there. But these animals are so large that the venom probably had
this solution effect. Even in a horse, by the way, and this
is a very broad generalization. If a horse is bitten on its belly or
maybe its leg or something like that, it's gonna swell and be painful,
but the horse will very very likely survive that. The problems with horses come
when the horse is bitten on the nose, like if they're sniffing or grazing
and they're bitten, and that's because the swelling will block the horse's nostrils,
and horses cannot breathe through their mouths, so if their nostrils are blocked,
then they suffocate. So treatment for a snake bite and a horse is literally
to shove a little hose up its nostril to prop it open so that it
continued to breathe until the venom exits the body. So yeah, I think
that in venomations to large animals may happen, for example, when the snake
is defending itself from trying to be being eaten by a mountain lion or bear,
or when it's being stepped on by a large hooved animal, but they
probably just swell up and then get over because of their large size and the
dilution of the venom. Yeah. Well, then let's just get right into
what happens when people get bit So, if you're a person and you get
bit by a snake, what's the thing to do. There's so much misinformation
out there, and there's developing misinformation, and there's debunked misinformation. So the
good news is that all of your listeners really just need to remember that they
just need to call name on one if someone is bitten by a retl snake.
On the hand, they should take off any rings or watches or constructive
jewelry that could become a problem when the swelling commences, and then they should
call name on one and get an ambulance or even a metavac helicopter if they're
out somewhere far away, to get to the hospital right Away's and that's it.
That's literally it for rattlesnake bites. Specifically, first aid on the way
to the hospital, the limb should be kept at heart level, not below
heart level like used to be recommended. At heart level, and then scientists
recommend that after being treated with anti venom and during recovery, that the limb
be to reduce the swelling because that seems to benefit the outcomes of these bites.
But in terms of just getting medical care, the only medical care is
anti venom and the person should never consider things they may have heard like tourniquets
or cutting and sucking or snake bite suction kits. Throw those in the garbage.
They don't work, they make it worse, they cause inflammation. And
then there's a new one that is like developing and going around that I'm really
trying to get out ahead of and say no, this is not true,
which is electric shock. What So people now believe that if they're envenomated that
they can either tase themselves or worse, hook themselves up to their car battery
and how that somehow would stop the venom. But it doesn't work. There's
a case study, a medical case study of someone who has bit in the
face by a retl snake. He was teasing or trying to kiss his pet
retal snake and then he had his friend warning cringe. He had his friend
attached his lip via jumper cables to the car and turned on the car to
shock him, and so he went to the hospital with not only a severe
and venomation to the face, but also with severe burns. So don't do
any of those things just go to the hospital. Yeah, I mean,
in the time it would take you to hook up your car to your lip,
I think you could call nine one one and probably get the ambulance there
faster than trying something out like that. I think so too, and I
think it's worth mentioning. I mean, you know, we make fun of
these sort of situations, but honestly, a rattlesnake of venomation is a very
serious medical problem, and people panic and people freak out when it happens,
and it's especially scary when it happens, which it so often does out in
nature. You know, someone steps on them on a trail and then they're
panicking what should I do? Or if they don't have cell service, what
do I do? And by the way, the answer to that is if
you don't have cell service, many of the newer cell phones smartphones actually have
an SOS built in, so you can learn how to use that before you
go out in the wild, so that anywhere you are, even if you
don't have a cell signal, you can send this SOS message out to get
help. But if you don't have that, then there are satellite GPSS that
you can like a spot GPS that you can keep with you to be able
to get that message out, because if you're bitten far from a trailhead in
a remote area, you're probably not gonna be able to make it back on
your own, either due to the pain or the disorientation that can come from
snake bite. And it's really key that people just get to the hospital as
quick as possible redl Snake bites don't result in the whole like being uc on
TV where someone is bitten and they take two steps and then they fall over
dead. That's not how it works. It would be a long, slow
process that could lead to death if not treated, or could lead to more
likely somebody recovering but undergoing severe severe pain and maybe even disability from the effects
of the venom on the tissue of the venomated finger, for example, things
like amputation or just not full function gain. So getting to the hospital really
quickly is more just to prevent any of those things happening. The vast majority
of people who get to the hospital and get anti venom right away, like
for example, within a few hours, fully recover. Wow. That's awesome.
Yeah, I mean, I guess to break it down a little bit,
how many people are bitten in the US by venomous snakes each year,
and then how many people die from those bites. There's around eight thousand venomous
snake bites per year in the United States, about a thousand of those are
from rettlesnakes, and about five people on average it usually range from about three
to twelve every year die and most of those are from rattlesnakes, not copperheads,
so that the most severe bites are from rel snakes. It's the least
severe, although still medical emergencies are from copperheads, which are over in the
eastern US and Midwest. And I should say that of those five people,
usually several of them at least didn't get medical care so for various reasons.
Either they were too far away from it to get it in time, or
they refused it for religious or financial or other reasons, or you know,
again, there's just other reasons. And so with this anti venom, it's
just very very rare somebody would die. Yeah, that's great to hear,
you know, I want to say something about that. Actually, this is
actually really important. I think that you know your listeners will like this.
So anti venom was developed in the nineteen fifties, and so nowadays that we
have this rattlesnake bite is seldom fatal. But I want you to everyone to
think about, like their grandparents before the fifties, or great grandparents or whatever,
snake bite was a very different threat back then. Yeah, And so
when you think about people's attitudes towards snakes and how much they hate rattlesnakes or
they're scared of them, it's still very much based on that reality that is
now passed because the fear of snakes is culturally transmitted by a families and via
the media. So things are changing now because of that. Rattlesnakes are becoming
recognized as being really important members of ecosystems and they are no longer as big
of a threat as they once were. And so for that reason, rattlesnakes
have kind of gotten a rebrand recently, something that I'm very passionate about.
So I wanted to be sure to mention that everyone kind of think, if
you're scared of snakes, where did that come from? It came from these
fears that from your parents, grandparents, whatever, that have now changed fundamentally
as you learn the reality. Yeah, thank you for saying that because so
on my shirt is a corn snake, because I have a corn snake.
And my grandma, who was born in the thirties, is like, I
am not coming over your house until you do not have a snake because she's
so afraid of them. And I've never been able to understand because she's from
Maine, and I'm like, you don't really have venomous snakes that you are
walking around near. But that makes a lot of sense if you know,
back in the thirties that was a thing that you probably wouldn't be able to
get treatment for. You'd have to walk like fourteen miles to a hospital to
try to get some help for it. So it makes a lot of sense,
definitely, all right. So John asked would it be in one's best
interest to use something like a walking stick to poke ahead of them on a
trail when in rattlesnake country? So he was thinking along the lines of,
like you were about to step on a rattlesnake, is it more likely to
strike out at the stick rather than you if it was in your path and
you didn't see it. So this is really complicated questions like this. People
hate my answers. Because I'm a scientist, so I do the whole it
dependens thing, yep. And that's because rattlesnakes all have different personalities, they
react differently to threats and to stimulus. They're unpredictable in terms of their defensive
behavior. So there's no rules when it comes to retl snake. So I'm
going to tell this is your patron here my opinion, which is that no,
it's not worth doing that. Here's why. First of all, most
popular trails are clear and you can see in front of you. And so
if you are paying attention to your surroundings and wearing proper footwear, which means
full solid leather hiking boots that cover your ankles and feet, so none of
these breathable mesh panels that prevent your feet be from becoming sweaty, deal with
the sweaty feet and wear prepper footwear, then you should be fine. Right,
you should be completely fine. Situational awareness, those types of things,
and the other reason that I wouldn't say, well, a couple other reasons.
It just sounds like a hassle to have like a stick in front of
you the whole time you're hiking, Like that would ruin it for me.
But the other thing about it is that sometimes retel snakes are sitting in the
middle of a trail, and if you go buy them, they don't even
budge might step right over them. I want to see you. But if
enough people step over them, or if they're harassed by a stick first,
they get aroused by that, they're stressed out, and then the foot comes
by them, then they might be more likely to strike. So in other
words, there have been some stories that rattlesnakes that are not seen by somebody
in a group. The first person steps over them, the rattle snake is
like, hey, what's that. The second person steps over them, the
rettle snake starts to get freaked out. The third person steps over them,
and it strikes. So I'm not saying that's a rule. I'm just saying
that's a scenario that could happen. I'm just a big advocate of proper footwear.
The only scenario where I would say that it might be worthwhile to be
poking around in the brush poking out with a stick is in a tall brush.
So if you're clearing out brush in your backyard, you may want to
poke around heavily in there to see if you hear something rattling before you get
your hands in there to start moving it around. Yeah, and I would
add onto that too, like if John is curious like what to do while
you're hiking, don't listen, don't have headphones in or have music blaring so
that you can hear things like if it was to rattle, so that you
can hear the rattle. So it's a good warning side exactly. He that's
a great segue into his next question, which is what is the best method
to deter rettle snakes from your property without causing harm to them? And then
if you do have one on your property and you would like to remove it,
how can you safely do that? On my website Centralcoassnakeservices dot com,
there's a press and links section that has a bunch of articles I've written and
YouTube presentations I've given recordings of those that talks about those exact same things,
those exact things. So I invite people to go look at those and some
tips that I can give you right now is that you can make your yard
less attractive to rettlesnakes by removing a lot of the things that they like,
which are three things. Water is one thing, so if you have leaky
faucets or bird baths pools, those will all attract rettlesnakes. Food, so
rodents is another thing. Things like bird feeders that have seeds that attract rodents,
or woodpiles or other things that attract rodents will also attract reil snakes.
And then the third thing, which is by far the most important, is
what I call low shade, so low to the ground shade, not you
know, shade from a big tree, but something on the ground that's providing
a hiding spot for those snakes. This includes woodpiles, pieces of tin,
or boards laying around. By the way, those of us who like snakes,
we put out skin or boards to attract snakes, so you definitely want
to get rid of those if you don't want snakes. Also, having crawl
space under your house that there's holes that rodent snake down into their squirrel burrows,
all those things will attract rattlesnakes. So keeping those things under control are
going to help you a lot. Another thing is the landscaping, So big
bushes that provide a lot of shade for rettlesnakes are going to be places where
they can hide, and people who live in rel snake country, we recommend
that they consider to have tall, spindly plants that don't cast a lot of
shade instead of like big bushes like lantana or rosemary or other classical retal snake
attracting plants. People who live in rel snake country who have severe problems with
rattlesnakes coming into their yards can also build a fence around their yard that keeps
rat snakes out. My company is one of many that does this around the
country, and it's called rettlesnake exclusion fencing or redl snakeproof fencing, and it
can be added to any existing fence to keep redlesnakes out. What was the
second part of his question, Yeah, he also is curious, like,
what is the best method to remove them from your yard if you do find
one. Yeah, great question. So the approved method by most states in
the United States is a relocation of retel snakes, which means that the ratle
snake needs to be captured and relocated a short distance away, which is usually
defined as about a quarter mile to a half mile away into like a wilderness
area. Most people who get snakes in their yards are going to be living
near some type of wilderness area that the snake came from. So usually it's
pretty easy to do that. Now it might not be so easy for people
to catch the retl snake, right. That's sometimes a scary thing for people.
So people who are worried about snakes in their yards or who find one,
they can find help by going to a website called free Snake Relocation dot
org and there's a map there where they can click on it and see if
there's someone near them. And in most major areas where there's lots of snakes,
and there's also cities, there's going to be somebody who can do that.
For example, my company is that here for free in San Luis,
Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. Also, a lot of people offer classes for
those who want to learn how to do that themselves. So I teach snake
safety courses. I do one a year for community snake handling, where people
can learn to relocate the reddle snakes in new yards themselves. And then there's
a number of organizations, including the redl Snake Conservancy and Save the Snakes that
offer courses in other parts of the state or the country where people can learn
how to do that themselves. If that's something they want to do, awesome.
Well I will end on a fun one. Taran asked, can you
share any surprising or less known facts about rattlesnakes that most people wouldn't know.
Let's do two here. So the first one I kind of mentioned before,
but I want to say it again, which is that rettlesnakes are highly social
animals. It turns out so even if they do spend a lot of their
time solitarily, more and more we're learning now have these really neat social behaviors
where rettlesnakes have, as we heard, parental care of the babies, but
also that they have friends and family members that they choose to hang out with.
So we're only learning that through recent studies where we can do the genetic
parentage. But we see in the field, especially on things like the live
cam, which again you can all watch soon at reddalcam dot org, we
see the individuals like to hang out together. And so for example, I've
seen on the live stream two females who always need to be touching each other.
They're like besties, and when another female approaches, they literally do this
like body bridge thing that is clearly showing like, no, you can't hang
out with us girls. So it is, it really is. It's crazy.
So that's one thing, is just that we're just starting to learn about
the social behavior of these rattlesnakes. But the second thing I wanted to mention
that is a really fun fact that everybody should know, is I already alluded
to the fact that there's very few snake bite deaths from any vendom snakes,
including rattlesnakes, and in the United States. That's not true in the rest
of the world, where there's a lot more bites and there's less medical care,
but in the United States it's true, luckily. And so what's happened
now is that retlesnake venom is actually saving more lives than it's taking, which
people don't know that. So I want to share that. And that's because
there's a number of drugs now that are made from rattlesnake venom. And so,
for example, if you know anyone who has been treated for a heart
attack, who maybe who had a stint put into their heart, or who's
at high risk for blood clots, it's very probable that they might be taking
a drug called eptipavitide, which is literally made from pigmy relsnake venom, and
it's because those rattlesnake venoms have those anti coagulants in them, which are designed
evolutionarily to cause massive bleeding in their prey, but when harnessed by a pharmaceutical
company, can provide an effective means of reducing the risk of blood clots in
patients. And so rettlesnakes are super important to conserve for these reasons. Like
what other secrets lie in their venoms. A lot of people are studying them
for anti cancer effects now and those sorts of things. So that's another thing
that you can share people can share with others when explaining why rattlesnakes matter,
why they're important, and what is your favorite interaction you have ever had with
a snake while doing research. I have this story I've told a few times.
It's just was the most amazing experience. Actually, it was one of
the first times that I got to go to the Prairie rettlesnake Megaden in Colorado.
And this was during May. It was the end of May, and
so it was when all the snakes are there. It was before the males
and the non pregnant females leave to go hunt in the prairie. So everyone
was there, pregnant females, non pregnant females, big males, baby REDTL
snakes from the previous year. Everyone was there. And when you go up
to this den, the snakes all like freak out. They're super scared,
and there's this logjam of snakes trying to get down the little holes, which
is adorable, but they all dived down the holes. So what I did
one day was I went over there. The pile of probably about one hundred
and fifty snakes all dove down the hill, and I sat down and crossed
my legs and I just sat there was still, and then slowly they started
to come back out. And when they first started to come they kind of
gave me the side eye, like that piece of the landscape wasn't there before.
But then they slowly I wasn't moving, so they got used to it
and they just came out. And they all just came out and like curled
up all around me, this ocean of snakes just all around me. And
I sat there for like two hours just watching them slowly curl up, watching
them interact. And then they just forgot I was there. I just became
part of the background for them, and it was so amazing to be right
there next to them and to watch them do their thing and watch them how
peaceful they are and how they are the exact opposite of the stuff you see
on TV where they're rattling and striking and being ferocious because people have harassed them
into those sorts of behaviors that people want to see on TV. I believe
that people really would like to see something like what I saw, which is
the snakes acting peacefully and socially, which is why we've developed this Ral Snake
livestream so soon everyone can virtually join me on that hillside and see the snakes
all in a big group together. Well, I really hope that does the
work of making people interested rather than scared of them. Like I cannot wait
to tune in. I think it'll be so neat, and I hope it
makes people a little less afraid of them in the process. You know,
that's part of the point of what we do this for. Right, We
eagerly engage in any sort of thing about getting the words out about word out
about these ral snakes maternal behavior or their social behavior. And so like,
one last fun tidbit for you about this, which is very exciting, is
there's a documentary coming out in probably the fall. It's called The America's and
it's going to be on NBC and it's the biggest nature documentary ever made,
like huge, and it's gonna be ten ten episodes series of everything from the
Arctic to the Antarctic in North America in South America, and there's gonna be
you know, ten episodes. One of them is going to be in Grasslands
slash Deserts and they filmed with us the rattlesnakes at this site and we have
the story of the mother Rattlesnake going to be on this high end documentary series.
And Ashley, the narrator is Tom Hanks. Oh my god, I
just can't wait to hear Tom Hanks's voice. He's like the voice of America
right telling the world about the wonderful mother Rettlesnake. It's just so exciting.
I can't wait. And you get to be part of it. Congratulations.
That is so well. It was really fun. And again the reason I
bring that up is just because he will and they will, through this documentary
have such a huge impact because of the reach that they have, So thank
you for doing this podcast as well anything that we can do to be able
to get the word out that these snakes are not these devilish beasts that they
are portrayed to be. It's really something that's important work that I try to
do and I appreciate your assistance in helping with that. Yeah, well thanks
for coming on and speaking of that. Where can people find your work and
especially where can they find your book that is out now. So there's one
website that is the hub to all of my projects and they can find that
at Emily Taylor Science dot com. But they can find information on project Redalcam
there, they can find information on Central Coast Snake Services on my lab at
cal Poly. They could also find information on a link to my book.
The book is available online at all major bookstores including Amazon, or if people
want a signed copy, they can order it from my website at Central Coast
Snakeservices dot com and then click on shop and I will send them a sign
copy. And we also have other swag like limited this, some T shirts
with the Snakes of California and other fun things. And all of the funding
all the funds we raised from them go to outreach, rescue and rehabilitation of
snakes here on the central coast of California. That is so cool. Yeah.
I always want to give people a way to get involved in this kind
of stuff. So just buying cool stuff help support snake research and rehabilitation,
which is so neat, So thank you. Yeah, that's a great way
to do it. People can also look at the support nonprofits, including things
like Advocates for Snake Preservation, Save the Snakes, the Orient Society, the
rel Snake Conservancy. There's so many more that people can support with small donations
and they do a lot of amazing work. Nice, awesome, Well,
thank you so much Emily for doing this. And that was my interview with
You're welcome. It's nice chatting with you. Right after we talked, I
ordered her book California Snakes and How to Find Them from her website and it
is a signed copy and it also came with some stickers. It's also just
a really nice quality book, like I love touching the cover of it and
the pages are so nice. And even though I live on the opposite side
of the country in New Hampshire, as someone who loves snakes and books.
I'm really enjoying it, and I'll add a link on where purchase a signed
copy in the episode description. And as she mentioned, I highly encourage you
all to check out rattlecam dot org, where you can watch a live stream
of Prairie rattlesnakes in Colorado right now, and in July you'll be able to
watch Western rattlesnakes in California. Either way, if you're someone who's afraid of
snakes, I hope you came away from this episode with a little less fear
and a little more compassion for them. And I know it can be easier
said than done, but I really do think if you tune into something like
rattlecam that it may help to lessen your fear of snakes. It's also almost
officially summer here in the Western Hemisphere and I have already seen snakes around my
property, so they are definitely out moving around. So keep an eye out
for them whether or not you like them, but mostly leave them be if
they're not in a place that's dangerous for them to be, or inside your
house if you don't want them there. So thank you all so much for
listening to this episode. Check out the episode description for links and where to
find Doctor Taylor on social media and where to find us on socials, on
Patreon, and our website. Thank you so much to joshuallsh for making our
inter music and his brother Jesse Walsh for his help in editing. And we'll
be back in two weeks with a new animal attack story. See yam