I am sympathetic, however – as happy as I am to mess with snakes, even venomous ones, spiders that dart around unpredictably really creep me out!Īs for advice, I think education and positive experience/reinforcement are key. I watch how parents react in front of their kids and it is very clear that they convey, however unintentionally, their own fear. However, as the kids get older, more and more of them become afraid, so that by the time I am dealing with adults, many of them – sometimes even most of them – won’t come near the snakes, and a few even have to leave the room! This suggests to me that a fear of snakes is learned and not innate. What I have observed is that when dealing with very young children, virtually none of them are afraid – they all want to touch and handle the snakes. I give a lot of talks and live reptile demonstrations in the community. Many people claim to be deathly afraid of snakes. But in a photo it looks much cooler to be holding up a big venomous snake than some puny lizard.
Lizard escapes lots of snakes full#
In the interest of full disclosure, I point out that my main research focus has always been lizards – snakes are an occasional thing. But in college I became disabused of this idea quickly when it came home to me that one could never really test one’s ideas about them – it would just be too frustrating never to know anything for sure!įortunately, an inspirational teacher and his course on comparative vertebrate anatomy got me turned onto reptile anatomy and function, and that’s what really set me on my path. Finding turtles and snakes was always a big plus, but I didn’t think about them seriously until college.īefore then, if I thought about pursuing my interest in animals as a career at all, it was more along the lines of dinosaurs and vertebrate paleontology. I was very fortunate in growing up in a home with lots of pristine forest around it, so I spent a LOT of time during adolescence prowling the woods and swamps. I have always loved animals, it is true, and I found reptiles of all sorts especially interesting, but it was more a casual interest than a passion. They’re usually out grabbing frogs and snakes from about the time they can walk. Did your fascination with them begin when you were a youth?įor reasons I don’t completely understand, herpetologists (people who study amphibians or reptiles) typically develop a very early obsession with the animals. You work with snakes on a daily basis and are often photographed holding or examining them. Kurt Schwenk, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, with Bob the snake. He is also working on a book about his experiences as a zookeeper at the Bronx Zoo.
Now Kurt Schwenk, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is studying the biomechanics of tongue flicking. His work has already shown why snakes have forked tongues.
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