Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
Speaker 2: People fear snakes.
Speaker 3: Oh, sure, there are people who don't, Like we discussed
Speaker 3: in our episode on spiders back in episode ninety four,
Speaker 3: people can overcome their fears with continued exposure and education.
Speaker 3: But for many of us, there's an almost innate fear
Speaker 3: of snakes that's so primal, so powerful, that even the
Speaker 3: most harmless of these animals can send us running in terror.
Speaker 3: And that's just for normal sized snakes. Now, what if
Speaker 3: the snake and question were twenty feet long and slithering
Speaker 3: towards you, its body as thick as your thigh. The
Speaker 3: glistening scales, the staring, lidless eyes, the tongue darting in
Speaker 3: and out as if it were longing to taste you.
Speaker 3: Twenty feet long, those are real. The stories continue to
Speaker 3: slither in of snakes much longer, and the Internet is
Speaker 3: littered with fantastic photos of alleged serpents monsters where the
Speaker 3: links are claimed to be forty or even fifty feet.
Speaker 3: Here's an example, an audio clip about a famous giant
Speaker 3: snake photo for the Congo. This is excerpted from the
Speaker 3: series Arthur C. Clark's Mysterious World a favor of mine.
Speaker 3: This is famous Belgian pilot Colonel Remy von Leirda describing
Speaker 3: a giant snake he saw or flying over the Belgian
Speaker 3: Congo in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 4: To make several pauses over the hole where the snake
Speaker 4: was in, enabled to let the man take a picture
Speaker 4: of it. And I made certainly between four and six
Speaker 4: passes right over the hole where the snake was in.
Speaker 4: By then I was already flying for twenty five years,
Speaker 4: so I have a very good experience of measuring things.
Speaker 4: And I would say the snake I saw there was
Speaker 4: close to fifty foot, close to fifty feet. I don't
Speaker 4: know you say fifty foot or fifty feet, but very
Speaker 4: close to. Certainly, it's actually quite unlike anything we've ever
Speaker 4: seen before.
Speaker 1: A giant, very creature.
Speaker 4: Part eight, Part mat.
Speaker 1: In Luckness twenty four, a mile long bottomless lake in
Speaker 1: the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 5: It's a creature known as the Luckness monster.
Speaker 1: Monster t.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 3: Blake Smith, and together with doctor Karen Stolesno, we're going
Speaker 3: to talk with author and snake expert John Murphy about
Speaker 3: giant snakes from the Garden of Eden to the river
Speaker 3: Gods of Asia to the Midguard Serpent. Legends and myths
Speaker 3: about giant snakes have been a part of human culture
Speaker 3: for thousands of years. I'm fascinated by these stories and
Speaker 3: by the real animals which inspire them. When Monster Talk
Speaker 3: was just an idea before I even how to put
Speaker 3: together the show, this was one of the topics I
Speaker 3: knew I wanted to cover, But finding a giant snake
Speaker 3: expert who is also willing to talk on our show
Speaker 3: turned out to be more difficult than I expected. Fortunately,
Speaker 3: we finally found one and he's got some amazing facts
Speaker 3: to share about the real world of giant snakes.
Speaker 1: Monstertle.
Speaker 2: John C.
Speaker 3: Murphy is a research associate of the Division of Amphibians
Speaker 3: and Reptiles at the Field Museum of Natural History. He
Speaker 3: recently retired from a thirty eight year science teaching career
Speaker 3: to write about reptiles, amphibians and biodiversity, to do photography
Speaker 3: and research whatever topics attract his attention.
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us on Monster.
Speaker 1: Talk, John Well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: So I'm sitting here looking at your book, Tales of
Speaker 3: Giant Snakes, a Historical natural history of.
Speaker 2: Anacondas and pythons.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us in the Monster Talk listeners what
Speaker 3: drew you to the study of these enormous snakes.
Speaker 1: Well, I've always been been interested in snakes in general,
Speaker 1: and obviously the giant snakes are the most spectacular snakes
Speaker 1: on the planet and also, believe it or not, much
Speaker 1: more common than most people realize, and very poorly studied. So,
Speaker 1: Bob Henderson, who has also been interested in BoA's for
Speaker 1: a very long time, you and I got together and
Speaker 1: collaborated on that book.
Speaker 6: So, John, many people have a fear of snakes, and
Speaker 6: some people think that it's a well some say that's
Speaker 6: an a nice fear. So, how's the general public's negative
Speaker 6: bias towards snakes impacted your career.
Speaker 1: Well, it's actually probably made it much better than it
Speaker 1: otherwise would have been, because really people are very conflicted
Speaker 1: about snakes. You know, some people will tell you that
Speaker 1: they're totally afraid of them, but at the same time
Speaker 1: they will ask you questions about them or tell you
Speaker 1: the stories about them. And in reality, I think there
Speaker 1: is sort of this duality, a fascination and curiosity about
Speaker 1: snakes as well as the fear of them, and this
Speaker 1: I believe is kind of the result of human ancestors
Speaker 1: evolving alongside of some very large snakes as well as
Speaker 1: many venomous species of snakes for a very long time.
Speaker 1: There's an anthropologist at the University of California named lynn Isabelle,
Speaker 1: and she's written a couple of books and papers about
Speaker 1: the human fear and fascination with snakes, and she basically
Speaker 1: says that the coevolution of giant snakes and particularly venomous
Speaker 1: snakes with human ancestors has sort of pre programmed our
Speaker 1: brains to have this fear and curiosity about them, and
Speaker 1: it is also responsible for our excellent near vision and
Speaker 1: probably some behaviors like declarative pointing.
Speaker 3: That would be that's a very specific benefit we might
Speaker 3: have gotten, so I think from before I even started
Speaker 3: this show, but we were just thinking about the show,
Speaker 3: Giant snakes was definitely one of the topics we wanted
Speaker 3: to cover. I think going back looking at old photos
Speaker 3: of people carrying enormous snakes out of the jungle in
Speaker 3: the the nineteen twenties and teens, and people who've allegedly
Speaker 3: taken photos from the air of giant snakes and there
Speaker 3: have been at least dozens, maybe more maybe hundreds of
Speaker 3: giant snake photos that have been faked using photoshop and
Speaker 3: various things that have come across my desk in the
Speaker 3: intervening years.
Speaker 2: But what makes a snake a giant snake?
Speaker 3: I mean, is how do we define giant in terms
Speaker 3: of these serpents.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a study that basically says that the optimum
Speaker 1: size for a snake is one meter. In nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: a herpetil just by the name of Clifford Pope wrote
Speaker 1: a book on giant snakes and he used the sort
Speaker 1: of standard of about twenty feet as describing a snake
Speaker 1: as a giant. So when Bob and I wrote that book,
Speaker 1: we decided that we would use twenty feet or six
Speaker 1: point one meters as the standard size that a snake
Speaker 1: should meet in order to be classified as a giant. Now,
Speaker 1: in Pope's book, he considered six species of snakes to
Speaker 1: reach something close to twenty feet, and one of those
Speaker 1: snakes was the bowl constrictor, the common ball constrictor. And
Speaker 1: at the time he wrote that book, there was supposedly
Speaker 1: a record sized bowel constrictor that was at eighteen point
Speaker 1: five feet. Unfortunately that turned out to be a misidentified
Speaker 1: in a condom, and boil constrictors probably rarely exceed fourteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen feet if they get that big wow. And
Speaker 1: so this is the kind of thing that happens when
Speaker 1: people get excited about snakes, they tend to exaggerate and
Speaker 1: make and make mistakes. So we stayed with the six
Speaker 1: point the six smeters with the twenty feet as the
Speaker 1: standard for being a giant snake.
Speaker 6: Okay, and so how did these giant snakes evolve their
Speaker 6: giant size.
Speaker 1: There's several different hypotheses about why giant snakes became giant snakes.
Speaker 1: Probably the first one is is that they evolved larger
Speaker 1: sizes to feed on larger prey, so they were not
Speaker 1: competing with smaller, sort of average sized species. And there's
Speaker 1: another hypothesis that would basically say, well, snake that are
Speaker 1: larger can produce more eggs and larger offspring than snakes
Speaker 1: that are smaller. If if male snakes choose larger females
Speaker 1: to mate with, then they are promoting in future generations
Speaker 1: that there's going to be larger females to reproduce with.
Speaker 1: And then there's also this idea that the bigger the
Speaker 1: snake is, the more difficult it is for it to
Speaker 1: lose heat. So if you're an ectotherm like snakes are,
Speaker 1: and you depend on being solar powered, if you evolve
Speaker 1: a really big size and the temperature drops a little
Speaker 1: bit below which you would otherwise like, you may not
Speaker 1: lose as much heat as a smaller snake would. So
Speaker 1: those are kind of the major ideas about why snakes
Speaker 1: may have evolved larger sizes.
Speaker 3: Monster Tcolists are probably very familiar with Titanibo, the the
Speaker 3: largest snake fossils that have been found today. Do what
Speaker 3: other prehistoric snakes.
Speaker 2: Do we know about?
Speaker 3: I mean, how much of the fossil record do we
Speaker 3: have of the evolution of snakes from their whatever ancestors were.
Speaker 1: Snakes did evolve from lizards.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's not they just diverged from lizards. I
Speaker 3: wasn't sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah they did. And many snakes, many groups of snakes.
Speaker 1: You know, they have remnant, remnant legs, they have a
Speaker 1: remnant pelvis, and I understand now that there is even
Speaker 1: a fossil snake that they have found that has four legs.
Speaker 1: This has sort of been the evidence has sort of
Speaker 1: been accumulating for quite some time. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: arguments over whether or not the ancestral lizard that gave
Speaker 1: rise to the snakes was a burrowing species or an
Speaker 1: aquatic species, and whether it was a very small species
Speaker 1: or a very large species. So, without string too far
Speaker 1: from the topic of giant snakes, all of the giant
Speaker 1: snakes today have remnant pelvic girdles, so they have a
Speaker 1: little spur that comes out externally that sort of the
Speaker 1: remains of a claw, and there are muscles attached to it.
Speaker 1: It's larger in males than it is in females and
Speaker 1: male pythons, and BoA's used that during courtship. As far
Speaker 1: as the fossil record goes, there are other pretty good
Speaker 1: sized snakes besides the Titanic ball. In nineteen oh one,
Speaker 1: Charles Andrews, a paleontologist, described Gigantopis Garstinia from eastern Egypt,
Speaker 1: and he estimated it to be between twenty nine and
Speaker 1: thirty one million years old, and it had some pretty
Speaker 1: good size of vertebrae, and he originally estimated it to
Speaker 1: be about thirty feet or nine point one meters. Another
Speaker 1: guy came along in nineteen oh five, and he described
Speaker 1: that the same snake as being between fifty and sixty
Speaker 1: feet long. But I think that Andrews was probably originally
Speaker 1: correct based on the size of the vertebrae that he got.
Speaker 1: These snakes, by the way, we're in a totally different
Speaker 1: family than boas and pythons. They were related to modern
Speaker 1: day file snakes, which are there's three or four species
Speaker 1: of file snakes and they're totally aquatic, and they're primarily Australian.
Speaker 1: And knew it.
Speaker 6: I'm from Australia. So the first thing that anyone asks
Speaker 6: me whenever they don't find out I'm from Australia, they
Speaker 6: asked me about snakes and spiders.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and how many venomous snakes you've seen in Australia, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And in all my years there just one. I
Speaker 6: saw a brown snake one day when I was going
Speaker 6: on a hike.
Speaker 1: That was it. A lot of these fossil remains are
Speaker 1: from this family, it's called paleophid, and some of them
Speaker 1: got to be, you know, at least the size of
Speaker 1: modern day of big modern day boas and pythons, and
Speaker 1: most of them were aquatic at least the bigger ones
Speaker 1: were so Titanic bo is certainly the most famous one.
Speaker 1: They estimated to be thirteen meters or about forty two feet,
Speaker 1: and it came from Colombia, South America, so it was
Speaker 1: related to it was a boat, it was related to
Speaker 1: anacondas and the common ball constrictor.
Speaker 2: That's a big snake.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely so, John, Were there any evolutionary advantages or
Speaker 5: are there any evolutionary advantages of being a giant snake
Speaker 5: versus a more mundane or typical size snake.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the evolutionary advantage would be that as
Speaker 1: long as there's food supply for really big snakes, they're okay.
Speaker 1: But when the size of the food the available food drops,
Speaker 1: then they have to eat smaller prey, which they have
Speaker 1: to eat larger numbers of smaller prey, which may in
Speaker 1: fact put them at a disadvantage because snakes like to
Speaker 1: take in large numbers of calories all at once and
Speaker 1: sort of hang out in one spot for a long
Speaker 1: time and digest their meal, and if they have to
Speaker 1: eat a lot of smaller prey, then they have to
Speaker 1: spend a lot more time hunting.
Speaker 2: So it's like Thanksgiving, but you just stay in the
Speaker 2: living room for months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 6: Over a lot of stories of giant snakes eating tigers
Speaker 6: and elephants and large animals like that. Are any of
Speaker 6: those stories true?
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I would hate to say that they're not true,
Speaker 1: but they're probably not true. Elephants, you know, a small
Speaker 1: elephant and a really big python. The elephant could be killed. Now,
Speaker 1: whether or not the python could eat it or not,
Speaker 1: I sort of doubt it. Sometimes snakes killed prey without
Speaker 1: actually being able to swallow it. It turns out that
Speaker 1: it's just more than they could actually handle as far
Speaker 1: as tigers are concerned. The sort of the really classic
Speaker 1: modern giant snake story that sort of kicked off I
Speaker 1: believe all of the other giant snake stories was a
Speaker 1: story that was written by somebody who was probably using
Speaker 1: a pseudonym is. The article was published by somebody named
Speaker 1: Edwin Whether in August of seventeen sixty eight. He claimed
Speaker 1: that he had an incounter through with a giant snake
Speaker 1: which was eating a tiger in Salon, which is now
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka. The article first appeared in a London newspaper,
Speaker 1: and then later it was published in Scott's magazine. And
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious that the story had no real basis
Speaker 1: in fact, because as far as we know, tigers have
Speaker 1: never been present in Sri Lanka. But this story, this
Speaker 1: story has kind of an interesting twist to it because
Speaker 1: it is the first time the word anaconda has ever
Speaker 1: been written in the English language, and the guy called
Speaker 1: the snake an anaconda, And of course anaconda today is
Speaker 1: applied to a large boat in South America, not a
Speaker 1: python from Sri Lanka. So it sort of brings up
Speaker 1: this issue of where the name anakonda actually came from.
Speaker 1: And it's it's a fairly long and involved story about
Speaker 1: how this name originated, but it seems to actually all
Speaker 1: go back to a clerical error, as somebody made in
Speaker 1: the Lighten Museum.
Speaker 6: It happens, it does, it doesn't happen with the word kangaroo. Well,
Speaker 6: in Australia we.
Speaker 3: Talk about giant snakes, but besides their size, are they
Speaker 3: different in any particular way from smaller snakes of the
Speaker 3: same you know, behavior type, Like if we have constrictors
Speaker 3: here in Georgia, is the constrictor here in Georgia if
Speaker 3: basically the same kind of behavior is going to be
Speaker 3: taking place, only on a bigger scale.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, there are lots of snakes that use constriction, sure,
Speaker 1: not just bowls and pythons, but things like king snakes
Speaker 1: and rat snakes right right, which you would have in Georgia.
Speaker 1: And yes, I mean the constriction process is sort of similar,
Speaker 1: but there are differences between you know, the constriction behavior
Speaker 1: that's evolved in BoA's pythons and let's say king snakes
Speaker 1: and rat snakes. So even though it basically works the
Speaker 1: same way, there are probably the snakes are probably actually
Speaker 1: carrying it out slightly differently because constriction, it looks to
Speaker 1: me like, probably evolved several different times, just like large
Speaker 1: body sizes, you know, and snakes evolve several different times,
Speaker 1: probably maybe more than a dozen times.
Speaker 6: So are any of the constrictors venomus as well?
Speaker 1: No, not as far as we know. But there is
Speaker 1: this idea that the lizard that was the ancestor to
Speaker 1: snakes was really carrying the genetic material to make venom.
Speaker 1: That would mean that that that ancestor was passing on
Speaker 1: that genetic material all its descendants, and venom is actually
Speaker 1: an ancestral trait in snakes, which means that potentially all
Speaker 1: snakes are venomous. And this is this doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: snakes are any more dangerous than they were before we
Speaker 1: knew this. It just means that it explains why some
Speaker 1: snakes that people thought were harmless are actually capable of
Speaker 1: giving you a venomous bite.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 3: So and even if they are not, they may still
Speaker 3: carry the genes.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, For example, garter snakes, you know, a widespread
Speaker 1: group of snakes in North America. They have a gland
Speaker 1: that produces some toxic molecules which helps them subdue their
Speaker 1: their prey, and they normally, you know, would never inject
Speaker 1: that into a human unless, of course, you smelled like
Speaker 1: a frog, or if you've been if you've been handling
Speaker 1: frogs and you picked up a garter snake and it
Speaker 1: bits you, you're likely to get a dose of a
Speaker 1: dose of venom from it. Wouldn't It wouldn't put you
Speaker 1: in the hospital, but you might have some swelling so.
Speaker 3: Yourself with a frog, except that we just got African
Speaker 3: frogs for Christmas here, so that's actually a real risk, now,
Speaker 3: do you uh?
Speaker 2: Do giant snakes have natural predators besides people?
Speaker 1: Well, uh, certainly the smaller ones. Do you know when
Speaker 1: they're when they're hatchlings or after they've just been born.
Speaker 1: In the case of the boa is, you know there
Speaker 1: they can be eaten by a wide variety of predators uh, raptors, uh,
Speaker 1: waving birds like hair and and lots of crocodiles. Turtle
Speaker 1: may prey on them. But after they reach a certain size,
Speaker 1: you know, the number of potential predators is thematically reduced.
Speaker 2: So you've already mentioned it. But let's just be very specific.
Speaker 3: What are the biggest snakes on the planet today and
Speaker 3: how big do they get?
Speaker 1: Well, I can tell you which ones are the biggest
Speaker 1: ones exactly how big they get, I can just I
Speaker 1: can just kind of guess. The anaconda is probably probably
Speaker 1: one of the longest snakes, and by faring away, weighs
Speaker 1: the most of any other snake of equal size. Reticulated
Speaker 1: pythons are also probably They may get longer than reticulated
Speaker 1: pythons or longer than anaconda's, but they would An anaconda
Speaker 1: that was twenty feet long would weigh much more than
Speaker 1: a reticulated python it was twenty feet long. Those are
Speaker 1: generally the two considered to be the two largest snakes
Speaker 1: on the planet.
Speaker 2: That is large.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well both of those, you know. They After I
Speaker 1: wrote the book Tales of Giant Snakes and people would
Speaker 1: ask me what how big the snakes get, I would
Speaker 1: say twenty eight and a half feet based on a
Speaker 1: twenty eight and a half foot reticulated python. They were
Speaker 1: supposedly maintained at the Pittsburgh Zoo named Colossus. Now Colossus.
Speaker 1: It turns out the twenty eight and a half feet
Speaker 1: length on it was not correct, and when some people
Speaker 1: followed up on this, it turns out that Colossus was
Speaker 1: much much smaller than the twenty eight and a half feet.
Speaker 1: So the largest reticulated python is probably going to be
Speaker 1: somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty five or twenty six feet.
Speaker 1: The anakanda again probably reaches about twenty five feet, and
Speaker 1: past that there is the African python. Nobody has got
Speaker 1: a good maximum minu but probably twenty three to twenty
Speaker 1: four feet. The Burmese python again probably twenty four to
Speaker 1: twenty five feet. It's Australian scrub python in Queensland's rainforests
Speaker 1: has reported to get to be twenty eight feet, but
Speaker 1: if it got to twenty feet or twenty three feet,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be at all surprised I saw that.
Speaker 3: I think the Bronx Zoo has a cash prize of
Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars for a live snake of thirty feet long.
Speaker 3: That's been standing for I think the prize has been
Speaker 3: out there for about a hundred years now.
Speaker 1: But that's about right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody's collected it yet.
Speaker 6: That rainforest reagent in Queensland's right when my mum looks
Speaker 6: off to go and pay your visiting.
Speaker 3: I think what's been happening is everyone's been looking for
Speaker 3: this snake, the thirty feet long one, and what they
Speaker 3: should have gotten is a good, healthy twenty five foot
Speaker 3: and fed it a lot.
Speaker 1: But well, here's the problem with that. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who have tried to do this.
Speaker 2: Oh really, wow, Yes.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who have decided, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to go get some big snakes and I'm
Speaker 1: going to pack them with food and see how big
Speaker 1: they get. But nobody's been able to do this.
Speaker 7: I mean.
Speaker 1: And one of the issues, of course, is is that
Speaker 1: you really need to start with younger snakes so that
Speaker 1: they because when they grow fastest is when they're young,
Speaker 1: and a lot of these pythons can reach ten eleven
Speaker 1: feet at the end of their u second to the
Speaker 1: middle of the third year of life.
Speaker 2: Wow, So is.
Speaker 6: It feeding them that makes them large? I mean, does
Speaker 6: that really determine the length?
Speaker 1: It seems that yes, food availability seems to cause at
Speaker 1: least some individuals to grow faster than others. And there's
Speaker 1: this hypothesis called the silver spoon hypothesis that basically says
Speaker 1: that smaller snakes that are born when food supplies are
Speaker 1: readily available and abundant will grow much faster than snakes
Speaker 1: that are born in years when food is is not
Speaker 1: as readily available.
Speaker 6: Okay, And to go back to Colosses for a minute,
Speaker 6: you were talking about mistakes made are regarding its length?
Speaker 6: Why are their mistakes made when it comes to measuring
Speaker 6: snakes or exaggerations when it comes to the measurements of snakes.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I think it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: measure a live snake. It's difficult, Like to try it.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to measure a live snake that's six feet
Speaker 1: long accurately. So if you get a snake that is
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty feet long, and you're putting a tape
Speaker 1: measure on it and you're trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: long it is. You know, the snake body is to
Speaker 1: some degree very elastic. I mean, if you think about
Speaker 1: how far you can stretch and you've got you know,
Speaker 1: twenty vertebrae or so, think about what happens if a
Speaker 1: snake has got three hundred vertebrae and is able to
Speaker 1: kind of stretch it that under certain circumstances, and then
Speaker 1: also contract all those muscles to pull all those vertebrae
Speaker 1: closer together. It really means that there's no absolute size
Speaker 1: for any given snake because because of this elasticity. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the bigger the snake is, the bigger the error
Speaker 1: is going to be when you try to measure it.
Speaker 2: You see, Wow, not.
Speaker 6: My kind of job, John. Giant snake's dangerous to humans.
Speaker 6: And if you could tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: some of the cases that you cover involving giant snakes
Speaker 6: eating people.
Speaker 1: You know, one time I wrote a paper and I
Speaker 1: made a really stupid mistake. I said that reticulated pythons
Speaker 1: were probably not a serious threat to humans. And this
Speaker 1: was a paper actually was a little field Guide to
Speaker 1: the snakes in the Danam Valley of Borneo. And I
Speaker 1: had been in this area for a couple of months
Speaker 1: doing an amphibian reptile study, and I knew there were
Speaker 1: reticulated pythons there, but I never saw one. And so
Speaker 1: when we were putting the s field guide together at
Speaker 1: the time, I just said, you know, reticulated pythons probably
Speaker 1: are not a serious threat to the humans. Well, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, reticulated pythons, Burmese pythons in the African
Speaker 1: pythons are all probably serious threats to humans. And there
Speaker 1: was a paper written by a guy named Heading and
Speaker 1: a herpetologist named Harry Green, and Heading had been working
Speaker 1: with a group of tribal people in the Philippines and
Speaker 1: he interviewed these people and asked them about various aspects
Speaker 1: of their life. One of them was, you know, had
Speaker 1: they had any contact with reticulated pythons. And what he
Speaker 1: found was was that fifteen out of fifty eight of
Speaker 1: these people they were called the agata of the males,
Speaker 1: which was twenty five percent, had been attacked by a python,
Speaker 1: and one out of sixty two women had been attacked
Speaker 1: by a part wow. So, and these would be reticulated pythons. Now,
Speaker 1: these people are fairly small in stature, and you know,
Speaker 1: he basically found that fifteen percent or sixteen percent of
Speaker 1: the members of this tribe had known at least one
Speaker 1: person who had been killed by a python.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So, you know, reticulated pythons are potentially very serious throughout
Speaker 1: the humans, and people who keep them in captivity have
Speaker 1: been attacked by them. And I know a person who
Speaker 1: kept a very large reticulated python and he went into
Speaker 1: his cage to clean his cage, and this was by
Speaker 1: the way, this was in Illinois, and it attacked him
Speaker 1: and he only got out of it alive because there
Speaker 1: was a one of his one of his workers was nearby,
Speaker 1: and the guy came in and they got the snake
Speaker 1: off of them. But Burmese pythons frequently attacked their owners.
Speaker 1: You know, the Burmese pythons are very popular, which is
Speaker 1: why they in the pet trade, which is why there
Speaker 1: are so many of them in the Florida Everglades now.
Speaker 1: And you know, they they do attack people that are
Speaker 1: handling them. Now, it's probably unlikely that you're going to
Speaker 1: get attacked if you're walking around in the everglades. But
Speaker 1: in captivity, people who keep big snakes should have somebody
Speaker 1: else nearby to help them escape the coils.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's that's that's enlightening. So that's actually one of
Speaker 2: the things we wanted to ask about was I've seen
Speaker 2: it talked about quite a bit.
Speaker 3: Is the invasive constrictors in the Everglades. How big of
Speaker 3: a problem is this? I mean, it seems like one
Speaker 3: that would become exponentially larger if they're actually able to
Speaker 3: breed there.
Speaker 1: Well, they are breeding there, and you know, some people
Speaker 1: have estimated that there's more than ten thousand Vermese pythons
Speaker 1: now in the Florida Everglades. Now, when they have these
Speaker 1: contests and they have all these guys running around down
Speaker 1: there with guns looking for snakes that they think they're
Speaker 1: gonna that they think they're going to catch, and they
Speaker 1: only come up with a few of them, it shows you.
Speaker 1: I think that makes the point that snakes are absolutely
Speaker 1: excellent at avoiding people and predator and you know, they
Speaker 1: can hide in remarkably small places. Even really big snakes
Speaker 1: can sometimes hide in places which are very very small.
Speaker 1: But it's really a bigger problem. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: big problem for the every ecosystem because you know, the
Speaker 1: native faunta has had no experience with, you know, dealing
Speaker 1: with pythons to get to be fifteen to twenty feet long,
Speaker 1: and so the pythons are going to be able to
Speaker 1: do some pretty serious damage to the populations of mammals
Speaker 1: and birds that are that are there.
Speaker 2: And I think I saw that they were eating alligators too.
Speaker 1: They do eat alligators, the elephants.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, but it's a it's a it's a very
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a The everyblades are just full of wildlife,
Speaker 3: so and I can't imagine much of it's ready to
Speaker 3: deal with a giant snake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well exactly. And it's you know, it's a serious
Speaker 1: problem for the for the ecosystem. It's unlikely they will
Speaker 1: ever get rid of those pythons. I mean once they're there.
Speaker 1: Once you get an invasive species of any kind, just
Speaker 1: about the chances of eradicating it is almost zero. The
Speaker 1: brown tree snakes in guamer you know, an excellent example
Speaker 1: of this, because fish and wildlife guys have been trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of those things for probably thirty years
Speaker 1: now and they have made very little progress and actually
Speaker 1: being successful. Yes, yeah, and they control the population a
Speaker 1: little bit. But those snakes are there to stay, just
Speaker 1: like the Burmese pythons are there to stay.
Speaker 2: In Florida, I remember them dropping.
Speaker 3: I think it was poisoned rats all over the island
Speaker 3: trying to help the I don't know if the snake's
Speaker 3: actually athos or not, but it seemed like a crazy
Speaker 3: idea to me.
Speaker 2: But I think that the key the lesson there is
Speaker 2: a snake doesn't have to be fifty feet long to
Speaker 2: be very dangerous to an ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. You know, all constrictors have now been introduced
Speaker 1: in several places, and it's I think the people in
Speaker 1: the Everglades and people in Hawaii, I mean, they're just
Speaker 1: now totally paranoid about invasive snakes. They have dogs now
Speaker 1: that apparently check all of the aircraft that land looking
Speaker 1: for looking for snakes.
Speaker 2: Hey, yeah, that would that would miss Hawaii very much.
Speaker 6: Snakes on a plane, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's strange movie because they start off in Hawaiians
Speaker 3: Like I was, I found it less plausible that they
Speaker 3: would have been able to get the snakes into Hawaii
Speaker 3: to get them onto the plane out of Hawaii.
Speaker 2: Anyway, it's not important.
Speaker 1: Sorry. John.
Speaker 6: In your book you talk about designer snakes. What's a
Speaker 6: designer snake.
Speaker 1: There's a huge industry that has grown up around a
Speaker 1: barrant patterned pythons, bolas, and other kinds of snakes, and
Speaker 1: people now breed these snakes for different unusual color patterns.
Speaker 1: They might be all white, or they might be partially
Speaker 1: white and partially brown. They might have you know, very
Speaker 1: they might have a purplish colored, purplish tint to them.
Speaker 1: Their irises have different colors, unusual colors, and this has
Speaker 1: become essentially breeding snakes to be living works of art,
Speaker 1: and people will pay just exorbitant amounts of money for
Speaker 1: these unusually patterned snakes. I mean, I've seen some of them.
Speaker 1: I've seen some reticulated pythons. The people had, they had
Speaker 1: developed them for certain color patterns and they were selling
Speaker 1: them for twenty twenty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: Well, I was at a conference recently, and those are
Speaker 6: guys selling snakes, and they were amazing different colors and
Speaker 6: they were going through about five hundred dollars each.
Speaker 1: They become cheaper the more of them they get into
Speaker 1: the market. So you know, it's like the first people
Speaker 1: to breed them, they make some money off of them,
Speaker 1: and then the next sort of group of people come
Speaker 1: along and they breathe more of them, and then as
Speaker 1: they sort of flood the market, the price drops on them.
Speaker 2: So are there ethical issues with being a snake owner,
Speaker 2: especially of a giant snake.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the ethical issues are to be sure
Speaker 1: that if you own a snake that it does not
Speaker 1: get loose, and this can cause multiple problems. It's not
Speaker 1: just that they may invade the everglades or become, you know,
Speaker 1: a problem that way. But when people release an animal,
Speaker 1: they of any kind, they think they're doing the animal
Speaker 1: of favor, when in fact what they're doing is is
Speaker 1: they're potentially spreading diseases, different kinds of bacteria and viruses
Speaker 1: that the organism may be carrying that wild populations may
Speaker 1: be totally naive to and their immune systems can't handle it.
Speaker 1: Or they may be carrying genetic material which is totally
Speaker 1: unsuitable and get into a population and you get some
Speaker 1: genes that are just totally inappropriate for that population causing
Speaker 1: some problems. So you know, as difficult as it is
Speaker 1: for people. They become very emotionally attached to animals, and
Speaker 1: instead of releasing it into the wild, they should either
Speaker 1: find somebody else to take it or euthanize it.
Speaker 6: Right, And in your book you talk about the novelty
Speaker 6: skin industry, and I assume that's the industry for making
Speaker 6: handbags out of snake skins and things like that. So
Speaker 6: how has that industry affected populations of giant snakes?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, Karen, it's it's almost impossible to know.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because nobody is out there actually
Speaker 1: counting the snakes that are in the populations or estimating
Speaker 1: the density of snakes in a given area. And most
Speaker 1: of these snakes, you know, they're they're picked up by
Speaker 1: local people and they're brought to a middleman in the
Speaker 1: middleman may bring them to another middleman, and eventually they
Speaker 1: work their way into the slaughterhouse where they get chopped up,
Speaker 1: you know, gotted, the skins are removed and they go
Speaker 1: to a tanning facility, and then you know, the manufacturers
Speaker 1: by the skins. And it's so difficult to sort of
Speaker 1: keep tract of this because snakes as a group of
Speaker 1: animals are expert at hiding. It's very difficult to get
Speaker 1: good population estimates on most of them. I mean I've
Speaker 1: tried to do this at various times, and just estimating
Speaker 1: the number of populated number of snakes in a small
Speaker 1: area of a given species is quite a challenge.
Speaker 6: Okay, so there's no legitimate farming for this sort of thing.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: You know, if there are people who will tell you
Speaker 1: that they that they farm giant snakes or receipt turtles
Speaker 1: or other kinds of other kinds of reptiles. But if
Speaker 1: those animals are even medium sized animals when they're sexually mature,
Speaker 1: chances are they're not really farm them. Chances are they're
Speaker 1: just pulling them out of the wild and they're saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we breathe these here, because it's quite labor intensive to
Speaker 1: feed them, take care of them, keep them healthy until
Speaker 1: they get to a size where they're commercially sailed them.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you've helped us get a better handle
Speaker 3: on the real life of these giant animals, which is
Speaker 3: fantastic because in our show we like to talk about
Speaker 3: monsters but as a springboard to talk about science topics
Speaker 3: and to know what's real. But in your research, have
Speaker 3: you looked into some of the legendary serpents.
Speaker 2: Like the I think it's pronounced.
Speaker 3: Nega are the midguard serpent, these sort of historical It
Speaker 3: seems like a lot of cultures have legends of enormous serpents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm familiar with those, I haven't really studied them
Speaker 1: particularly well. What I have done is looked at some
Speaker 1: of the what are potentially at least the sort of
Speaker 1: the ancestral snake stories that would go back to Africa.
Speaker 1: There's a group of hunter gatherers in South Africa. Actually
Speaker 1: there are several different groups of them, and they have
Speaker 1: mythical snakes and if you if you read through their
Speaker 1: stories and look at the various aspects of their their stories,
Speaker 1: you can actually find very similar themes that run through
Speaker 1: snake stories in the Middle East, in India, Southeast Asia, Australia,
Speaker 1: and North America. So a lot of these the stories
Speaker 1: that for example, the Naga stories or the stories of
Speaker 1: the plume serpent from from Central America. These I think
Speaker 1: these stories can all be traced back to these snake
Speaker 1: stories that people carried with them when they moved out
Speaker 1: of Africa, and the usually the snakes are considered to
Speaker 1: be guardians. They oftentimes protect water. They also oftentimes have
Speaker 1: the ability to change the landscape. They oftentimes have the
Speaker 1: ability to shape shift and change into humans. So these
Speaker 1: mythical snake stories seem to all have a very common theme,
Speaker 1: although they change a little bit with the culture that
Speaker 1: they that they're present in. I really think that a
Speaker 1: lot of these these snake stories are all built upon
Speaker 1: these stories that originated in Africa.
Speaker 6: Why do you think that there are so many anecdotal
Speaker 6: stories about giant snakes they seem to be very popular
Speaker 6: and focuable.
Speaker 1: Well, just because you know, people are are fascinating with them.
Speaker 1: I mean when you see when you see a snake
Speaker 1: that's capable of swallowing you, it has the ability to
Speaker 1: change your perspective on life. I guess.
Speaker 3: I found even just a skin in my backyard that
Speaker 3: stretched across the width of the back of my truck,
Speaker 3: and I put it on the back of the truck
Speaker 3: just to measure it. And my wife came home and
Speaker 3: saw that and just lost her mind.
Speaker 2: Bless your heart.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've never I've never seen a snake anything
Speaker 3: around here bigger than a pine snake. And that's you know,
Speaker 3: four or five inches long and really really thin.
Speaker 2: Those are tiny.
Speaker 1: Pine snakes. If it's that's not the pine snake. I know,
Speaker 1: pin snakes get quite quite big. Some people call them
Speaker 1: go for snakes or or bull snakes.
Speaker 2: But it could be it's like a little grass. It's
Speaker 2: not grass colored. It's i'll you know, well, I'll look
Speaker 2: it up right quick.
Speaker 6: You're saying your book as well as the snake, skins stretch,
Speaker 6: and that can give you a false section of size.
Speaker 1: Sure if sometimes people will use skins as a way
Speaker 1: to say, oh, you know, snakes really do exceed thirty
Speaker 1: feet or more, and those are oftentimes based upon just
Speaker 1: skins that people have cut off the snake. And you know,
Speaker 1: experiments that different people have done show that it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to remove the skin from a snake of any
Speaker 1: snake without stretching it by at least twenty percent, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you can stretch them much more, and it's not
Speaker 1: always readily obvious that they have been stretched. So, you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody says that they've got a snake skin that's
Speaker 1: thirty feet lawn, and it proves that snakes get to
Speaker 1: be thirty feet in actual fact, you have to subtract
Speaker 1: twenty percent of that, which would be about six feet,
Speaker 1: making the snake about twenty four feet.
Speaker 3: So my correction is a worm snake and a northern
Speaker 3: ringneck snake are the two snakes.
Speaker 2: They're both very small, and those are small. I don't
Speaker 2: know if I've seen a pine snake or not, but
Speaker 2: apparently not.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Do you think that the number of sort of these
Speaker 3: giant snake stories has been increasing because of the Internet.
Speaker 1: I don't think that it has increased because of the Internet.
Speaker 1: I think it just has increased. If it has increased,
Speaker 1: it's increased because there are more people, and you know
Speaker 1: they're they're more interested in in snakes, I mean snakes.
Speaker 1: Like I said, almost it's very difficult to find somebody
Speaker 1: who will not have a conversation with you about snakes.
Speaker 1: You can go to places where they're arenal snakes and
Speaker 1: people talk about snakes. You know, if you go to
Speaker 1: Ireland or the Scandinavian countries and you can find people
Speaker 1: that that have snake stories and they know about snakes
Speaker 1: even though there are very few or no snakes uh
Speaker 1: present in that in that geographic area.
Speaker 3: A recent just a few years ago, there was a
Speaker 3: giant River snake video going around that was probably just
Speaker 3: some trash in the water, but it got It was
Speaker 3: very popular because it was sort of this Nordic myth
Speaker 3: of a giant snake. That's the people love them. But
Speaker 3: we've been it's been on my mind for years. I've
Speaker 3: been wanting this to be part of much talk for
Speaker 3: a long time.
Speaker 6: So really the whole six years I've been doing the show,
Speaker 6: we've been talking about it.
Speaker 2: See here we are getting it. I'm so glad we
Speaker 2: found you and that you were willing to talk to us,
Speaker 2: because the uh, finding someone who was both knowledgeable and
Speaker 2: willing to talk has been almost as elusive as finding
Speaker 2: a giant snake. Sorry.
Speaker 6: In your book, you talk about the constrictor Rule. Can
Speaker 6: you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: Well, the constrictor rule is really a policy that came
Speaker 1: out of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and it's it's
Speaker 1: basically to try to reduce the chances of getting more
Speaker 1: large constrictors turned loose in the Everglade or elsewhere in
Speaker 1: North America. And it's because these things are injurious to
Speaker 1: the ecosystem, the government is certainly interested in keeping them
Speaker 1: out of the country and Obviously they're already here because
Speaker 1: there are many people who are already keeping African pythons
Speaker 1: from these pythons, Indian pythons, antecon is as pets. So
Speaker 1: if somebody decides, oh, we're going to turn these loose
Speaker 1: in Florida or in somewhere else, particularly along the Gulf
Speaker 1: coast where you've got fairly warm climates, the potential for
Speaker 1: having you know, more ecological disasters is certainly there. Plus,
Speaker 1: I mean what it costs to deal with it in
Speaker 1: terms of tax dollars. I know that in the state
Speaker 1: of Illinois, in the Chicago area, we've had a problem
Speaker 1: with zebra muscles, and zebra muscles, these little mollusks that
Speaker 1: grow quite quite well in in sewage pipes and block
Speaker 1: block sewage pipes. You know, the state of Illinois is
Speaker 1: spending tens of millions of dollars to get try to
Speaker 1: control those those zebra muscles. And when you look at
Speaker 1: what invasive species actually costs society, uh, it's huge. So uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's really kind of why the I think the
Speaker 1: Constrictor rule was put in place, because people view these
Speaker 1: these snakes as being a serious problem for for wildlife,
Speaker 1: for the ecosystem for humans. So it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: one of the it's one of the policies that they
Speaker 1: can try to put in place. But whether or not
Speaker 1: it makes a difference, I don't know. I mean, they
Speaker 1: it sort of is after the fact. You know, they
Speaker 1: can arrest you, find you, after you've turned them loose
Speaker 1: in the in the environment. So I would think that
Speaker 1: probably almost any snake that could possibly be turned loose
Speaker 1: in Florida has already been turned loose. Florida already has
Speaker 1: more species of non native lizards there than they have
Speaker 1: native lizards. You know, water monitor lizards are are doing
Speaker 1: quite well in parts of Florida.
Speaker 2: And elderly New Yorkers they're taking over.
Speaker 1: Well. They may they may be feeding the elderly New
Speaker 1: Yorkers with the water miner.
Speaker 2: Future, do you so?
Speaker 3: I think for our listeners who have been worried about
Speaker 3: fifty foot snakes, we've established that they're really not likely
Speaker 3: to run into one bigger than twenty five feet in
Speaker 3: real life.
Speaker 1: I'm a twenty five foot snake though, is still going
Speaker 1: to be capable of swallowing a person. Yeah, I remember,
Speaker 1: it's not something that should bother somebody in their everyday
Speaker 1: life in the United States.
Speaker 2: No, No, it shouldn't. It shouldn't. It probably still does, though,
Speaker 2: So do you do we know why snakes don't grow
Speaker 2: as large now than than they did the time of
Speaker 2: the Titan Boa.
Speaker 1: Well, let's assume for the moment that there was a
Speaker 1: Titanaboa cruising the uh Amazon or an ocot rivers today
Speaker 1: in South America, and so you've got this thirteen meter
Speaker 1: forty two foot snake, and the question becomes, what is
Speaker 1: it going to eat? Now, you could answer that with
Speaker 1: the statements anything, It would that. Yeah, but anacondas are
Speaker 1: already there and they're already eating the largest prey that
Speaker 1: is available to them. So a titanicbo would just be
Speaker 1: out of luck in terms of finding bigger prey. I mean,
Speaker 1: it would have to be feeding on anacondas and crocodiles
Speaker 1: and caymans. But you know, it would be like I said,
Speaker 1: it would be having it would have to eat many
Speaker 1: more prey because it can't take in the really big
Speaker 1: meals that most of the that most of the giant
Speaker 1: snakes would otherwise eat.
Speaker 2: So you would hype out the size.
Speaker 3: It's largely due to the lack of available food, larger
Speaker 3: preyer prey.
Speaker 2: Okay, right, good.
Speaker 6: So what are some of the more pervasive myths about
Speaker 6: snakes that you might like to see eradicated.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, in some ways, I don't think you'll
Speaker 1: ever eradicate the myths about snakes, but some ways, in
Speaker 1: some ways it's it's actually good to have them around
Speaker 1: because it makes it does make people curious. It also
Speaker 1: makes people somewhat stubborn because they think they know something
Speaker 1: that they really don't know. And you know, it gives
Speaker 1: people an opportunity. I think a lot of these missiles
Speaker 1: give people an opportunity to kind of connect with nature,
Speaker 1: because so many people have sort of divorced themselves from
Speaker 1: realizing that they are in fact part of nature and
Speaker 1: dependent on the ecosystem like all other life forms are.
Speaker 1: And these kinds of myths, to some degree, are a
Speaker 1: way to make connections with nature. Which ones I can't
Speaker 1: think of anyone that I would like to eradicate, other
Speaker 1: than the fact that maybe snakes don't get much bigger
Speaker 1: than twenty five feet as far as we know. But
Speaker 1: even some even a lot of herpetologists just insist on saying, oh,
Speaker 1: the biggest snakes, they get to be thirty feet or
Speaker 1: thirty three feet. And anytime somebody tells me, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the snakes get to be thirty three feet long, I
Speaker 1: know exactly which story they got it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, in the book, you do mention the myth about
Speaker 3: snakes constrictors especially hypnotizing their prey, and I remember that
Speaker 3: being in the the Disney Jungle Book cartoon movie, the
Speaker 3: animated film, and it looks like from the previous they're
Speaker 3: doing a live action version of the film and it's
Speaker 3: going to be in there as well.
Speaker 2: Apparently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I you know, I think, yeah, this hypnotic
Speaker 1: power that snakes have, I think it kind of goes
Speaker 1: back to this idea that when a snake is hunting
Speaker 1: a lot of times it just freezes in place and
Speaker 1: it will not move, and it's waiting for the prey
Speaker 1: to come to it. And it's not hypnotizing the prey,
Speaker 1: but it's hoping that the prey does not see it
Speaker 1: and wonders close enough to it that it can strike it. Certainly,
Speaker 1: a lot of vipers do this, rattlesnakes do it, a
Speaker 1: lot of other even non venomous snakes will will do this.
Speaker 1: So again, you know they somebody might interpret this as
Speaker 1: some kind of mesmerizing force that snakes have, but in
Speaker 1: fact it's based on biology.
Speaker 2: Give made that point very well in the book too,
Speaker 2: So outstanding people need to buy a book. Yes, can
Speaker 2: you tell us about this updated version that you're working on.
Speaker 1: Well, the updated version is more of a natural history book.
Speaker 1: I don't focus so much on size and the older
Speaker 1: stories and the tales of giant snakes. We tried to
Speaker 1: look at all the literature that went back to the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century and take what we thought would be interesting
Speaker 1: to people. But in the newer version, it's going to
Speaker 1: be based more on what we have learned about snakes,
Speaker 1: about giant snakes through science in the last twenty five
Speaker 1: or thirty years, and it'll be a it'll be a
Speaker 1: book that focuses on how snakes survive, how they're related
Speaker 1: to each other, and why we think that snakes, giants
Speaker 1: snakes get to be as big as they they actually do.
Speaker 3: Well, we will put a link to your tales of
Speaker 3: giant snakes in the show notes, and when you get
Speaker 3: your new book out, we can send an update to
Speaker 3: our listeners let know about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, sounds good.
Speaker 6: We've just got one final question.
Speaker 1: John.
Speaker 6: We like to ask all about guests this what's your
Speaker 6: favorite monster?
Speaker 1: It was my favorite monster? Well, I would say that
Speaker 1: if it's not, if I ignore the giant snakes issues,
Speaker 1: I would probably say it has to be the Abominable Snowman.
Speaker 2: That's a good one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, one of those perennial favorites.
Speaker 2: And great for this time of year. As we're recording
Speaker 2: this avant, this episode will probably alive in April. But
Speaker 2: I am really, really so happy that you spent time
Speaker 2: with us.
Speaker 3: To answer our questions about giant snakes and thank you
Speaker 3: for us really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for coming on to Monster Talk with us.
Speaker 2: It was great.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Oh thanks for inviting me. I hope it
Speaker 1: turns out that it's it's what you want it.
Speaker 2: Oh, it is. It's absolutely absolutely what I wanted, and
Speaker 2: I think I think it's what the listeners will want
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: So monster.
Speaker 3: You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 3: I'm Blake Smith, and together with my co host, doctor
Speaker 3: Karen stolesnow you heard us interview snake expert and author
Speaker 3: John Murphy about giant snakes. A link to Murphy's book
Speaker 3: will be in our show notes at MonsterTalk dot org,
Speaker 3: along with some articles about the evolutionary basis of snake
Speaker 3: fear and much more. What can we make of people
Speaker 3: like Colonel Remy van Liirda who say they saw a
Speaker 3: snake at fifty feet or longer? Until we have a body,
Speaker 3: all we can be sure of is that no recently
Speaker 3: living snake that large has been confirmed by science. Furthermore,
Speaker 3: humans are terrible at estimates of size. It can easily
Speaker 3: be fooled, especially when witnessing something unusual. Still, it's a
Speaker 3: compelling idea, and like a lot of monsters we talk
Speaker 3: about on this show, we're always just one verified corpse
Speaker 3: away from changing the books. Until then, I hope you'll
Speaker 3: be satisfied with the science facts presented in this episode.
Speaker 3: Sometime around the time this episode comes out, we'll be
Speaker 3: crossing the three millionth download for Monster Talk. Thanks for
Speaker 3: taking the time to listen to the show, and thanks
Speaker 3: for sharing the show with your friends and for leaving
Speaker 3: us reviews on iTunes. This week, Google play also added
Speaker 3: podcasts to their feed, so welcome to any Google play
Speaker 3: listeners joining us. The way I've set the show up.
Speaker 3: Each episode's usually.
Speaker 2: A standalone You can listen to whatever order you want.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll take a look at our.
Speaker 3: Back catalog as well as our newest entries. Say do
Speaker 3: you self identify as a skeptic? Are you fond of
Speaker 3: scientific thinking? Do you live in the San Francisco area?
Speaker 3: If so, you should consider going to the twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: Skeptical Conference. The twenty sixteen conference will be held Sunday,
Speaker 3: May fifteenth at the Oakland Asian Conference Center. Go to
Speaker 3: skepticalcn dot org for details. Here's science communicators Meet Pillow
Speaker 3: science enthusiasts. Skeptical con dot org. May fifteenth, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Monster Talk is an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. The
Speaker 3: views expressed on this show are those of myself and
Speaker 3: my guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Speaker 3: the Skeptic Society, or of Skeptic Magazine, or of the
Speaker 3: Snake Handley Church in my hometown of Cardinal Georgia.
Speaker 2: Monster Talk theme music is by Pete Stealing Monkeys. Thanks
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