Snake Expert Rates 9 Snake Attacks In Movies | How Real Is It? | Insider

Trying to suck out the venom from a

snake

bite, no matter what type of

snake

it is, is absolutely useless. I am Dr. Sara Ruane and I am Assistant Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Today we will look at snake

attacks

in

movies

and judge how

real

they are. That? I think a snake could accidentally end up in someone's luggage and then get out, or it could just be stowed away somewhere on the plane. Snakes are pretty good at getting into very small places and are very secretive, so they could be there for a long time and you wouldn't even notice.

There are so many species of snakes in this scene. They are a mixture of harmless snakes that are not going to cause anyone any problems. So those are milk snakes that fall from the ceiling, maybe a corn snake, some of the most common pet snakes that people have. Even if a snake is not venomous, one of the ways it will defend itself when cornered is by striking and biting. In

real

ity, snakes have quite weak jaw muscles with respect to chewing because they do not chew their food, but rather swallow it whole. If the snake doesn't have fangs, if it's not poisonous and all it has are these tiny teeth and it was meant to bite you, it's really no big deal.

Yes, sir, I'm soaking the necklaces with that. The pheromone will make these guys go crazy. Using pheromones to make these snakes act so wild is unrealistic. Pheromones in snakes are not very well known, but there has been work done with pheromones in squamates, which is the group that contains snakes and lizards, so some work with geckos has shown that they definitely use pheromones to communicate. Typically, pheromones will have a lot to do with mating, mate search, mate selection, perhaps even male vs. male or female vs. female combat for potential mates. But as far as being aggressive towards other species, that's really unlikely.

I'm going to give "Snakes on a Plane" a four for its realism. I like that there are actually some real snakes used in the movie, but the behavior of these snakes looks really bad for snakes and is totally inaccurate. A human can outrun almost every snake in existence. Plainly, an anaconda certainly cannot chase a person. This anaconda has a lot of upper body strength that a real anaconda couldn't muster, especially out of water. Anacondas are primarily aquatic and reach enormous girths, and one of the reasons they can do this is because they live in water and the water supports that body weight.

So, the anaconda in this movie looks gigantic in size. It looks like maybe it's somewhere in the 40 foot range. And although it is believed that anacondas can come close to approximately 30 feet, the reality is that, according to legitimate documentation that has not been challenged, 20, 25 feet is much more realistic. If they are on the larger side and you are alone and one wraps you up, you need a second person there to get you out of that. It wouldn't be impossible if you have a second person who can start unwrapping the snake, but on your own, you're actually quite limited in what you can do to get out of that situation.

Typically, twitching snakes completely kill whatever they are trying to eat before they begin consuming it. By first restricting its food, the prey then loses the ability to do anything. In reality, that snake will take its time when feeding, and given the way snake skulls are put together, it's not a simple process. People talk a lot about snakes unhinging their jaws when they feed, but the reality is that their jaws aren't unhinged to begin with. So the top of the skull is one piece, but the lower jaws actually sit in a small slot on each side. The lower jaw of a snake is the same thing, where it can stretch very, very much.

And so, this elastic ligament allows the snake not only to open its jaws very wide horizontally. In this clip, when the snake is feeding, it appears to be simply devouring the human, but in reality, to drag that person into its digestive tract and down its throat, that snake will actually use a jaw. at a time, and then once it actually gets to the throat, where there's a lot of musculature, you can start to use those muscles the same way we swallow something. But it takes a while before that kind of natural reflective action takes over. So, I give "Anaconda" a four because the way the anaconda moves and its speed is incredibly unreal.

Anyway, anacondas are not out to eat people. What we're seeing is a mix of heavy-bodied snakes, boas, and pythons, and then a group of legless lizards that aren't snakes at all. Snakes are simply a species of lizard, so if we were to look at a family tree of snakes and lizards, snakes are within it. The snake sitting there like that and looking defensive but actually doing nothing is pretty accurate. Snakes do almost everything in their power not to bite. Venom is only used defensively as a secondary defensive system. Snakes primarily use venom to capture prey and kill it safely.

To avoid being bitten in a situation like that, staying still is a good strategy to start with. Stay calm, without sudden movements. Anything that might scare the snake is more likely to bite it because it will be scared. And then the next step would be to try to back away very slowly and calmly. So, that's a python and it's just hanging out. That seems pretty realistic. That's what most snakes do. Most snakes, even if you are close to them, will remain fairly calm if they can avoid having to do anything. One of the best ways snakes defend themselves is to not move and hope you don't see them.

I'm going to give it a five. What I like about this clip is that the snakes for the most part act like snakes do. These snakes mostly just mind their own business. Maybe they're punching a little when Indiana Jones is actually harassing them, but not even the cobra does anything, and that's actually quite realistic. I have to take away some points because most of the animals in this clip are not snakes at all. Can you hear me? Snakes don't really hear like we do. If you have a pet snake, you won't teach it its name, and it will look at you and recognize that you are even talking to it.

That said, snakes can feel vibrations, particularly through the lower jaw, so they can feel something like a footprint. And there is certainly evidence that snakes hear super low frequencies, but the human range is not something that snakes are picking up. By moving their tongue, snakes taste everything in their environment and bring those scent molecules to their mouth and allow their brain to process what is around them. So even if they can't see it, they are able to sense when there is something there, whether it's something to worry about, like a predator, or if it's something to be excited about, like maybe a potential mate, or if it's something to eat. .

This snake is found in a zoo environment. He is probably incredibly accustomed to people and is probably very well fed. If I fell in there, I would just keep an eye on the snake and calmly get out, just climb up and get out. They act how I would expect people to act. Jump on furniture, trying to get out of the way. However, if a snake wanted to do something to a person because it was feeling defensive or because it thought it was going to eat someone, which is really unlikely, climbing onto something probably wouldn't be an effective way to get away from it.

But then again, you could leave quickly. The snake is not likely to follow you. It represents the snake very calm and docile, which is quite realistic. The blinking, the hearing, that's not accurate at all, but because they portray the snake so well, I'll still give it a six. That snake in the clip appears to be approaching very deliberately, sinking its two front fangs into it alone for the express purpose of biting it. And it's really weird trying to portray that because that's not actually how snakes bite. They will engage their upper and lower jaws and bite completely.

In the United States, people are most often bitten on the hand, ankle, or leg. Cutting a cross, X, or cut into a snakebite wound is something you see even in medical advice for snakebite kits when you go back in time a little. But the reality is that doing that is only causing you more problems. What people think when they do that is that they're going to make a nice incision so they can start trying to suck out that poison and get it all out. It is actually necessary to inject the poison into the circulatory system, directly into the tissue, for it to be effective.

So, assuming you don't have mouth sores or maybe an ulcer, something that allows venom to get into you, you could eat snake venom and, in theory, you'd be totally fine. And that is what differentiates poison from poison. Poison is something that you ingest, you have to eat it and then it can enter your body through the stomach or sublingually in the mouth. Ultimately, this character is unable to get help in time to fully negate the effects of the poison and ends up losing his arm. If someone is bitten by a snake such as a rattlesnake and cannot receive treatment relatively quickly, it is not a death sentence.

However, that hemotoxic venom will begin to eat away at the tissue where the bite site is and cause problems like gangrene, rot, and can ultimately result in amputation even if you don't die from it. . So this is realistic in the sense that this is what someone might do if they saw someone getting bitten by a snake, even if it's not the best treatment. So I'll give this a six. F---! So, that's not boomslang at all. This is a rat snake. This is not what boomslang looks like. It's probably the most inaccurate depiction I've ever seen, given how many close-ups there are of a rather distinctive-looking snake.

They do not have teeth in the front of their mouths to inject venom. Instead, they have these enlarged teeth in the back of their mouth. They do not have a sophisticated venom delivery system like a syringe, like a rattlesnake does. Boomslangs were not necessarily known to be dangerous because they do not have these front fangs. 30 seconds before the poison does its job. You could get yourself a big syringe of snake venom, 100%. Because of the way the antivenin is made, you have to get the venom from the species of snake you're targeting, and that's done by taking the snake, and that's called milking it.

And basically, under controlled circumstances, the snake is encouraged or forced to bite, usually it's some kind of rubber sheet that is stretched over some kind of jar or glass, and the snake bites it, and then the venom starts to drip the Cup. Oh. Usually when you see an antidote administered in a movie like "Bullet Train," that's not actually how it would be applied in real life. The antidote is not just a dose and that's it. You are usually given a certain amount of dosage depending on the severity of the bite and the symptoms you have, specifically for the species or group of species that antivenom was created for.

And you are monitored, and if you continue to get worse, they will give you a little more. It's also ridiculously expensive. It's not something you just carry with you. Getting a dose of antivenin and then being bitten relatively soon afterward could protect you from a subsequent bite. One thing I will point out is that the antidote is very good at stopping the poison circulating in a person's body, but any damage that has occurred is usually not reversed. A boomslang is not a constrictor and will not necessarily wrap around something and hold on tightly. A rat snake, the snake it looks like, can do something like that, but the snake is not going to hold on for its life if given the chance to escape.

I'm going to give this one one. I think this is one of the most unreal scenes I have ever seen. The snake is not a boomslang. The snake's behavior is nothing like a boomslang. The antidote and how they describe it working is totally unrealistic. A snake could definitely lunge forward and bite someone in the face. Mambas are really big, or can be really big. They move pretty fast. They spend some time climbing, so they have a pretty good ability to attack someone in the face from that angle. That wouldn't be impossible. The snake may feel quite worried and defensive about being surprised by a human who, from the snake's perspective, will probably try to kill it because that's what people normally try to do with snakes.

Most snakes will take a stance and only bite when they are actually pushed towards it, but it is certainly not impossible. Budd, I would like to introduce you to my friend, the black mamba.Black mamba. Someone probably wouldn't feel so bad so instantly. I mean, they would feel it, but it wouldn't necessarily be just falling to the ground instantly from a mamba sting. Venomous snakes come in two main flavors. You can have a snake that is neurotoxic to its venom or hemotoxic. And black mambas fall into the general category of neurotoxic. The neurotoxic poison will cause your nervous system to start shutting down, and this happens because the poison molecules stick to our sodium and potassium channels and cause them to not pump efficiently, and that is what causes you to have things like paralysis, your diaphragm stops working and therefore you essentially can no longer breathe.

This is not a bad clip regarding realism. I'm going to give this a seven. With snakes like rattlesnakes, I'm always going to be very, very, very cautious with how they are handled, and I'm never going to pick up a rattlesnake like that. No herpetologist who didn't want to end up in the hospital would do that. When snakes bite, they typically strike, make contact, and break free fairly quickly. The only time you see a snake hanging like that is when snakes have these recurved teeth, and because they curve back, if they manage to get their teeth into something, sometimes they can get a little stuck.

You actually have to push them forward and disengage them because of those recurved teeth. That's not something that's going to work. You couldn't do anything and it would be just as effective. Trying to suck out the venom from a snake bite, no matter what type of snake it is, is absolutely useless. It just starts acting so quickly and dissipating through the tissues, through the blood, that there's no time to start trying to suck it out. And it's not something that's in a capsule where you can get it all out at once. Pouring alcohol on them I don't imagine really matters, and it certainly won't make the person suddenly sit up and feel good.

As far as depicting what a rattlesnake looks like, it looks like a legit rattlesnake. In terms of behavior, in terms of the way of dealing with the bite, totally ineffective. I'm going to give this a five. This is the worst. For precision. There are no types of snakes, including cottonmouths, that will flock to hang on to someone just to bite them. If, in fact, that child, say, tried to pick up a snake or fell on a snake and ended up getting bitten, no other snake would show up to check on it or get involved. That would never happen.

And the snake responsible for the bite, the moment it no longer felt threatened or harassed, took off and left. Barro: What time is it? Neck bone: 4:18! Mud: Shout it every 10 minutes. Using that Sharpie and getting time is to follow how the poison progresses through the child's system and see how the swelling progresses, and that can be a useful thing. It is usually seen more in the treatment of snake bites once the person is already in a hospital so that we can see if the effects of the venom are slowing down and have essentially been stopped by treatment, usually with an antivenin.

But that's not a bad thing to do. The progress of the snake venom and swelling progressing through the child's leg seems pretty legitimate. You're going to have swelling. Your cells are going to start doing all kinds of crazy things. Lysing, bursting, bleeding. I'm going to give this a nine. The snakes themselves are not portrayed very accurately in their behavior, but saying, "Let's take this person to the clinic" and then simply going to trained medical personnel is absolutely the right answer. And for that reason alone, this gets my rating, probably the highest I could give. My favorite scene from watching these clips today is "Indiana Jones." This is a movie I've seen before, but only now looking back on it and seeing that all the "snakes" in the movie for the most part are actually just legless lizards, I found it quite charming.

It's fun trying to identify real animals, compared to something like "Bullet Train" where it's totally inaccurate. Thanks for watching. If you liked this video, why don't you skip to the next one?