07/29/2023
Please join Southeast Texas Snake ID. Very informative and transformative. I’ve copied a post to help people understand NOT to kill snakes:
From: Nelda Macias
On a previous post, I was discussing how Rattlesnakes exhibit parental behaviors with their babies. I stated that as far as I knew… Rattlesnakes are the only species that exhibit this behavior. In that post, Dr Harry W. Greene shared studies with me that he took a huge part in conducting and writing. There is a some evidence that Copperheads and Cottonmouths may exhibit some of these behaviors as well. There is more literature on these behaviors in Rattlesnakes, only because they have been studied for these behaviors more extensively than that of Copperheads and Cottonmouths.
I want to stress that by parental behavior, I mean that more of the sample of Rattlesnakes were defensive of their “pups” than the ones that weren’t, and the behaviors are not to the extent that mammals and other fauna go to, to nurture their young. The evidence leaned toward the Rattlesnake mothers and the babies would tend to stay together for the first 6-10 days after birth. Once initial ecdysis took place, the babies went out to venture their world on their own.
Parental behavior is a relative term. Mammals (including humans), nurture their children far longer than other fauna. As for the snakes in the study, most were observed defending their “pups” and birthing sites, allowing their young to absorb heat from their bodies, and a few were observed “herding” their young from a perceived threat!
For many, many decades, snakes were thought to leave their young to fend for themselves from birth. There are some people who believe that snakes are nothing but disgusting, loathsome creatures that don’t deserve to live, but that’s so far from the truth. The more we observe and learn about snakes, the more we realize that they aren’t vicious creatures that will hunt you down. They have the capacity to protect their babies for the first few days of life. They deserve our respect as mothers, as vessels to provide us with means of healing through medications, and the ability to maintain ecological balance within our environments by means of consuming disease-baring rodents and the pests they carry (etc.). Open your mind to facts about our scaley friends that we teach here. Understand that snakes aren’t out to get you. They simply want to survive.
Photos of a gorgeous Mojave Rattlesnake, Crotalus scutulatus, venomous, that I photographed out in West Texas in 2020. Observed by me, Caleb Paul, and Dawn Rose Reeves.
