Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life

by Catherine Cooper Hopley

This fine specimen, natural size, and also the Tapering Rattle, both from Mexico, were lent to me by J. G. Braden, Esq. of Lewes, and copied accurately.]

Not the least important of all the speculations to which the rattling tail has given rise, is the question, ‘Of what use is it?’ for we know that nothing exists in vain. Apart from the fact that the American savages make some medicinal use of the rattle, this elaborated, curious, and not unsightly instrument has as yet had no special and determined office assigned to it to the advantage of its possessor, though theories regarding it are numerous.

Formerly, when only the dangerous powers of the reptile were understood, it was sufficient to say of it in a tone of pious thankfulness, that the Almighty had so armed this serpent as a warning to its enemies. Some of those early writers introduce the rattlesnake to us as the most benevolent and disinterested of dumb animals, conscientiously living up to his duties, obedient to that ‘peculiar Providence’ which has given him a rattle ‘to warn the inadvertent intruder of danger.’ ‘He maketh such a noise that he catcheth very few,’ an evidence of imprudence wholly inconsistent with his inherited ‘wisdom.’ Indeed, between the character given of this ‘superb reptile’ by Chateaubriand, and the self-sacrificing qualities assigned it by some other writers, we can only wonder how a hungry rattlesnake ever managed to survive at all, and how it is that the race is not extinct long ago.

That the early and unscientific travellers, speaking from a thankful experience of having escaped a rattlesnake through hearing where it was, should seek no further for the utility of the rattle, is not much to be wondered at. But so lately as 1871 one of our popular physiologists, whose work is a textbook, has expatiated on this theme so positively that it is necessary to quote his words on this ‘admirable provision of nature,’ which apparently has elaborated a unique appendage for the purpose of starving its proprietor!

‘The intention of this organ is so obvious, that the most obtuse cannot contemplate it without at once appreciating the beauty of the contrivance.... It (the snake) announces the place of its concealment, even when at rest, to caution the inadvertent intruder against too near an approach.’[86]

If all the venomous serpents were thus beneficently armed (the cobras of India especially), the crusade against snakes would be at an end, or never need have been instituted; for supposing the heedless loiterer to have been a bird, squirrel, guinea-pig, or any of the lesser mammalia which form the food of most snakes, these happy creatures would have had the world to themselves long ago, while vipers had kindly starved themselves out of all traces.

‘Every creature of God is good,’ we must repeat and ponder over. Even a deadly rattlesnake, and every part of that rattlesnake, has its appointed use.

The ‘inadvertence’ (in this instance on the part of the writer who thus expressed himself) has not been without its use as well, for a more careful attention has been given to the rattle in consequence; and much controversy has since arisen among some of the ablest herpetologists, particularly in America, where much that was new and suggestive soon found its way into the scientific journals.

Briefly to summarize some of the arguments, I will repeat a few of them as suggested by some well-known naturalists. In that able periodical, the American Naturalist, vol. vi. 1872, the subject was thoroughly discussed. Professor Shaler, in a paper on ‘The Rattlesnake and Natural Selection,’ admitted that whereas he had hitherto thought and taught that the rattle did more harm than good to its owner, he now knew that the sound is so similar to that of the stridulating insects upon which some birds feed, that he had no doubt of its use in attracting these to the snake. He himself had mistaken the sound for a locust. ‘Does it invite its enemies or entice its prey?’ he asks. ‘Those snakes that can best attract birds, are best fed.’ In reply to this, a Mr. J. W. Beal of Michigan affirmed that he had often mistaken the sound for grasshoppers; which educed many similar accounts from persons who had been in danger of treading on a Crotalus through ‘inadvertent approach,’ supposing that only an insect were there. A child had taken it for a cicada, some one else for a locust, etc. Any one who is acquainted with the wild parts of the American Continent, is familiar with the ceaseless chirps and whizzings of those ubiquitous insects which are furnished with the stridulating apparatus, and which lead you almost to expect to see a scissors-grinder behind every tree. These are all the more deceptive on account of their varying cadences, now louder, now softer, approaching or receding, just as the sound of the rattle varies by increased or less rapid vibrations, or according to its individual size and strength. In a paper read before the Zoological Society by Mr. A. R. Wallace in 1871, he invited attention to this fact of the resemblance between the sound of the rattle and the singing of a cricket, and that its use seemed to be to decoy insectivorous animals.