Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life

by Catherine Cooper Hopley

This was ‘the only case on record,’ for it is very unusual for the Crotalidæ to eat each other; and very probably, in this instance, the cause was a mutual meal. ‘Moccasins’ (Tropidonoti) at the Gardens sometimes have such a hard grip on each other as to fetch blood. I once saw two of these rearing themselves high in their scuffle for the unhappy frog of which both had equal hold. The keeper was obliged to administer corporeal reproof, which caused one of them to let go, when the other swallowed the frog almost at one gulp, as you might swallow an oyster. Nor do they invariably turn the frog round to swallow it head first. This is done if the frog is likely to escape. These so-called ‘moccasins’ are of a very pugnacious disposition. One of them once startled me by dashing at me through the glass, with such violence that I thought the glass would have been broken. I was doing nothing whatever to alarm it, and I knew the snakes quite well. But in that angry mood its aspect seemed so changed, that I asked the keeper if that were a new snake and a venomous one, which it certainly resembled at the moment. I may here mention that Professor Brown Goode (who presided over the ‘American Science Convention on Snakes’) once caught a Tropidonotus fasciatus in Florida, which was so like the ‘dreaded moccasin’ (Ancistrodon piscivorus), that not until he had examined the mouth and found it was harmless could he identify it. These Tropidonoti have been known to take raw meat occasionally; so has the Xenodon, and so has a rattlesnake at the Gardens. Indeed, of one of these the keeper said, ‘It will eat any dead thing;’ and he found it convenient sometimes to give it a rat or a guinea-pig which a neighbouring snake had killed by poisoning, but not eaten. The Crotalus in such cases imbibed some foreign venom with his dinner. One Crotalus at the Gardens would eat only rats, others prefer guinea-pigs.

‘Look at that rat!’ exclaimed a lady to her friend, when the keeper gave the rattlesnake a good-sized guinea-pig.

‘I think it must be a rabbit; it is too big for a rat,’ returned the friend.

Before they could decide this zoological question, it lay dead. The rattlesnake struck it and left it. It gave one gasp, fell over, and in half a minute was dead. Another day a guinea-pig was six minutes dying, but on this occasion the rattlesnake had expended some of its venom in angrily striking the iron rod with which the keeper was moving something in the cage. When the guinea-pig seemed to be dead, the Crotalus, after eyeing and smelling it all over, that is, investigating it with its tongue as if to be assured, was about to take it, when the little animal had one slight spasm more, and the snake darted back its head and rapidly retreated. Watching them as I have done for years, I am still undecided whether excessive timidity or their low order of intelligence is paramount in the rattlesnakes. They are so slow and sluggish of movement, that those accustomed to them hold them in tolerable contempt. I have seen Holland watch his opportunity, open the cage, and put his hand in to snatch away a guinea-pig to give to another snake if the Crotalus did not want it.

‘They always coil before striking,’ is often said. They certainly take time to think about an attack and to make ready by having plenty of coils—slack rope, as it were—at their command, in order to reach their aim, the ‘always coiling’ not truly meaning that they wind themselves round and round as a sailor coils a rope, with their head in the middle. The ‘coiling’ has been thus described by persons with ‘unscientific imaginations;’ but having its head in the centre of such a coil, the snake would not easily reach its object. Often the coils are like those of ‘Totsey’ when taking her choice of a bird, having loose folds near the head, which is always forward in readiness for the attack.

Excellent opportunities of observing the relative venoms present themselves in zoological collections—not only the degrees of poison seen in the different serpents, but the effects produced by one serpent at different times. Of those species when in full vigour there is no doubt but that the South American rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) is one of the most virulent. Sometimes this species will strike at a young rabbit or a guinea-pig, and death is almost instantaneous. One such instance was observed when a rattlesnake struck a guinea-pig on the head, the little animal falling as if shot, and in such a flash of time that Holland examined it to ascertain the cause, and ‘its brains had turned quite green directly.’

‘A new rattlesnake’ was introduced in the autumn of 1873. Not new to science, but this, I regret to find, is all that my notebook records in heading some observations made September 26th of that year, ‘a very warm day’ for the season. A guinea-pig was put into the cage, when the snake (I think it was Crotalus durissus) approached its head closely and stealthily till quite near to the little animal, shrinking back at the slightest movement on the part of the guinea-pig, which sat staring and blinking in a corner. Each time the snake recoiled, even at a blink, it kept its eyes fixed in alarm on the piggy, who stupidly returned the gaze, not knowing what to make of the snake or of the people so close to him. By and by the snake, regaining courage, again ventured nearer, and again when nearly close started back at a slight movement of the guinea-pig. Three times a similar approach was made before the snake ventured to strike, betraying its extreme caution and timidity. As soon as struck, the guinea-pig was convulsed, and falling on its side was dead in three minutes.

Rats do not succumb to the poison nearly so quickly as rabbits, guinea-pigs, and birds.

Another guinea-pig struck by a rattlesnake immediately fell over on its side, and died, panting hard, in about three minutes. One could not discern the precise moment of its last gasp; but in this case there were no convulsive jerkings of the limbs.