Fierce Snake

Species

Macken Murphy

Anthropology, Social Sciences, Species, Science, Animals, Nature

4.8 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2019

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This animal, the inland taipan (a.k.a. the "fierce snake") is the most venomous snake on earth. How much of their venom could kill you? How much could kill a football team? How much of it could kill all of New York? Find out about this, black t-shirts, and Theodore Roosevelt all on this episode of Species.

Bibliography

Macken & Ben Shapiro

Transcript

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0:00.0	You came out of the womb with a built-in snake radar that allowed you to detect and recognize snakes in your environment before you'd even seen one.
0:10.3	Before anyone had even told you that snakes existed, before you had the linguistic capabilities to be told that snakes existed, you knew what they were.
0:20.4	You knew what they looked like, and you knew they were
0:22.9	important. In a laboratory setting, infants react to images of snakes with a stress response.
0:31.1	Now, how this knowledge of sorts gets passed down through genes is somewhat of a mystery.
0:38.7	It could be that there's random variation in reactions to various stimuli, and in this case, a stress reaction was simply
0:45.2	selected for. Some people were randomly born to notice snakes, and those people had an advantage.
0:53.1	That's possible. There's also some spooky research in this area
0:57.0	that suggests maybe learned fear can be passed down. In a lab setting, scientists trained mice
1:05.6	to be scared of the scent of cherry blossom of all arbitrary arbitrary things, by providing them with this scent
1:12.8	and then electrocuting them. I know that's appallingly cruel, but the results are relevant
1:18.7	because in the next generation, the offspring of these mice showed an immediate untrained
1:25.0	stress response to the scent of cherry blossom.
1:29.0	How crazy is that? Their parents were trained to be scared of cherry blossom, and so they were
1:34.9	born fearing it. Scientists have found some epigenetic changes that likely explain this. Essentially,
1:42.7	the genes of the parents were changed to reflect their experience, and those changes were passed down.
1:49.3	And plausibly, this could have an effect on us.
1:53.2	Our ancestors definitely had nasty encounters with snakes, and so it's theoretically possible that they passed down the stress reaction they
2:02.3	had to us. However, they got it, though, there's plenty of evidence that we have it. There's evidence
2:08.8	that we are primed to develop a phobia of snakes. Not that we are born with a phobia, to be
2:14.8	specific, but we are born to pay attention to snakes, and if we
2:19.0	have a bad experience, or even if others tell us about their bad experiences, or even if we see
	...

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