黑料吃瓜

The Curious Aztec takes you behind the scenes of scientific investigation and discovery taking place at 黑料吃瓜. This month, we're exploring the creepier, crawlier side of our research.

When I asked 黑料吃瓜 biology professor and snake researcher Rulon Clark to show me where he keeps the snakes, I didn鈥檛 know what to expect. I know I didn鈥檛 expect an unmarked door in a building basement. I didn鈥檛 expect Tupperware shelves, each plastic bin sliding out to reveal its reptilian resident. And I certainly didn鈥檛 expect to hear an immediate thsssk-sk-sk-sk-sk-sk as I stepped into the room.

鈥淎m I鈥攁m I being rattled at?鈥� I asked, mentally gauging the plastic separating me from the sound to be maybe a sixteenth of an inch thick.

鈥淵es,鈥� Clark said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 one of our rattlesnakes. He鈥檚 just letting you know he鈥檚 there.鈥�

Oh yes. I was quite aware of him.

鈥淪ometimes when you鈥檙e working down here, you鈥檒l hear them lunging and hitting the plastic. Thunk, thunk,鈥� he said.

In the reptile room, there are 11 rattlers of various kinds, dozens of harmless garter snakes, a few other odd species of snake鈥攕ome venomous, some not鈥攁nd also quite a few lizards. These snakes live a pretty good life with all the food, shelter and safety they could ever want.

In turn, they help Clark and his colleagues figure out the defensive strategies employed by small mammals that in the wild try to avoid the unpleasantness of becoming prey.

Evolutionary fear

Despite more than a decade of hands-on work with snakes, Clark has never been bitten. 鈥淚鈥檓 very careful,鈥� he said, adding that people鈥檚 fear of snakes is way out of proportion with their actual risk.

鈥淏eing bitten is a very, very, very rare scenario,鈥� Clark said. 鈥淪nakes will only bite a human defensively. You鈥檙e a bigger, scarier animal than they are. They only want you to get out of the way so they can hunt mice in peace.鈥�

So why are we so afraid of them? It鈥檚 an unfortunate holdover from our evolutionary past, he explained.

鈥淲e evolved with the danger of venomous snakes, even though they no longer pose much of a threat to us,鈥� Clark said. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 evolve with cars and cupcakes and the things that actually kill us.鈥�

Split-second survival

Back in his office, where the only snakes are the ones in poster pictures and on the 鈥淒on鈥檛 Tread On Me鈥� flag hanging in his window, Clark tells me more about his research.

Recently, he and his graduate student Bree Putman (snake tattoo, wrist) in the journal Behavioral Ecology looking into how ground squirrels evade snake bites. Trying out several different experimental conditions with the help of high-speed cameras, they discovered that when ground squirrels suspect there might be a snake nearby, they prepare to at a moment鈥檚 notice, bodies twirling and tails spinning to confuse the striking snake.

Clark, Putman and another colleague are just beginning a new line of research examining another desert-dweller, the kangaroo rat, which pulls a similar trick, but possibly even more effectively. The kangaroo rat鈥檚 leap springs it two to three feet into the air鈥攁bout five to six times its body length. It happens in a split second, Clark said, and it very quickly takes the rat out of the snake鈥檚 strike range.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 like you or me jumping on top of a three-story building,鈥� he said.