Snakes have fascinated and frightened people for thousands of years, and the truth is often stranger than the myths. From unusual survival abilities and bizarre evolutionary adaptations to remarkable encounters between humans and venomous species, these facts reveal just how extraordinary the world of snakes and snake venom really is.
Only Modern Species Latin Name
1. The boa constrictor is the only living animal commonly known by its full Latin name, boa constrictor. The only other example is the extinct Tyrannosaurus Rex.
2. Adult California ground squirrels have a protein in their blood that allows them to survive rattlesnake bites. The squirrels also heat up their tail and wave it to let the rattlesnake know they are aware of them since rattlesnakes have infrared vision. They do not do this with other snakes.
3. A Roman military commander named Hannibal Barca filled clay jars with poisonous snakes and had his soldiers throw them onto enemy ships during a naval battle to incite panic, and he won.
4. At the Tokyo Zoo, when a snake was given a live hamster as a meal, the two became ‘best friends’.
5. Pigs are immune to snake venom, a trait shared with mongoose, honey badgers, and hedgehogs.
6. Scorpion venom is the most expensive liquid on earth at $38,858,507.46 per gallon, far surpassing Thailand cobra venom, which is $152,835.82 a gallon.
7. Left-spiraling snails are generally as rare as left-handed humans because left- and right-spiraled snails cannot mate easily, but in Japan snakes eat right-coiled snails readily while they cannot bite into the left-coiled ones, so left-coiled snails are far more numerous there.
8. Before the invention of anti-venom, the black mamba had a 100% fatality rate and its victims would be dead in about 20 minutes.
9. The muscle that makes a rattlesnake rattle fires 50 times a second and can continue for up to three hours, producing as many as 520,000 rattles without stopping.
10. The deadliest sea snake, the beaked sea snake, is actually two look-alike species; both appear identical and are equally deadly.
Silent Snakes Survive Better
11. Rattlesnakes are evolving to stop rattling. They once rattled to warn hoofed animals so they would not step on them. Now they have become more secretive and silent to avoid being hunted by humans.
12. Cobras kept in Asian medicinal “snake wine” may enter a dormant state inside the bottle and can revive, bite, and potentially kill a person after more than three months.
13. Antivenom for snakebite is produced from the neutralizing antibodies a horse generates after being injected with snake venom.
14. Discovery Island, an abandoned island at Disney World, was visited by three men who swam to it and discovered preserved snakes in Coke bottles along with other unsettling items.
15. Since the early 20th century, the Wildlife Conservation Society has offered a substantial cash reward, currently worth US$50,000, for the live delivery of any snake 9 meters (30 ft) or longer in length, but the prize has never been claimed despite numerous sightings of giant anacondas.
16. Bill Haast of Florida, also known as the “Snake Man”, was bitten by poisonous snakes at least 173 times. He injected himself with snake venom every day for over 60 years to build immunity. He saved countless lives with his antibody-rich blood, and he lived to be 100.
17. An 11-year-old reticulated python named Thelma at the Louisville Zoo in KY experienced a virgin birth, producing six female baby snakes despite no male snake ever coming near her. The zoo curator speculated it was due to optimal living conditions and that he had fed the snake 40 pounds of chicken.
18. Due to a robust immune system, Opossums are immune to a variety of deadly snake venom.
19. Sea snakes are often thirsty and dehydrated; they depend on rainwater, which collects as a thin layer on the surface of the ocean.
20. The “Cobra Effect” is when a solution intended to fix a problem actually makes the problem worse.
Boomslang Bite Causes Bleeding
21. A single bite from the snake known as the Boomslang can cause a person to bleed from all openings in the body.
22. In 2009 in Florida, a couple faced third-degree murder and manslaughter charges after their pet Burmese python escaped its cage and squeezed their two-year-old daughter to death.
23. All of Australia’s snakes, spiders, sharks, crocodiles, and poisonous sea creatures combined only kill five people per year. Horseback riding accidents kill twenty Australians per year.
24. Peng Fan, a Chinese chef, died after a severed cobra head bit him while he was chopping its body to make soup.
25. On 9/11 after the attacks, the only plane permitted to fly was a flight from San Diego to Miami delivering anti-venom to a man bitten by a highly poisonous snake, and it was accompanied by two jet fighters.
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