What Good are Rattlesnakes? A #RattlesnakePR Primer

I have two jobs, and both of them involve rattlesnakes.

Sometimes I chuckle at how odd my career choice is. I didn’t grow up chasing snakes around the countryside like many of my fellow herpetologists. I fell in love with rattlesnakes in college, dropped my other career plans, and never looked back.

While I’m lucky to be paid to work with animals I love, I do recognize that I’m weird to love rattlesnakes. My views on these predators do not match those of most members of the public. While I have always known this, it’s one thing to know and another to experience. My “main” job, that of a college professor studying rattlesnakes and mentoring students on how to do science, kept me in a bubble for fifteen years. Inside that cozy academic bubble, students who also liked rattlesnakes sought me out for research opportunities. I enjoyed adult beverages with colleagues at conferences, all of whom also liked rattlesnakes. I retweeted photos from other snake-lovers and liked Instagram posts of gorgeous rattlesnakes doing snakey things.

Fast forward to 2019 when I began my other job by founding Central Coast Snake Services (CCSS). This company aims to reduce negative interactions between people and rattlesnakes by identifying snakes people see in their yards or on trails, by removing and relocating rattlesnakes in people’s yards, by installing rattlesnake-proof fencing, and by providing snake safety training to companies whose employees regularly come into contact with rattlesnakes. Founding CCSS has burst my rattlesnake bubble and forced me to face the fear and hatred that most people feel toward rattlesnakes. One distraught client tearfully told me how her toddler had nearly stepped on a rattlesnake in their barn. Another was so fearful of an alligator lizard because it “looks snakey” that she insisted I come relocate it even though I assured her it was harmless. The truth is that fear of snakes is extremely common and can be debilitating.

Rattlesnakes have a public relations problem, and I need to be a better #RattlesnakePR rep.

My hypothesis is that if people experience snakes, get to know snakes, and some of this misinformation is dispelled, then at least some of these people will have a change in attitude about snakes.  

Matt Holding safely shows a Pacific rattlesnake to a young girl as her mother looks on. Positive experiences like this, along with encouragement from parents rather than expression of their revulsion or fear of rattlesnakes, contribute to the appreciation of rattlesnakes in nature. More here.

This is important. Hundreds of thousands of rattlesnakes die annually at the hands of people who fear them, via axe, shovel, gun, vehicle tires, and more. Rattlesnake roundups alone claim thousands of lives needlessly and perpetuate the notion that rattlesnakes are better off dead, and the methods used (gassing underground burrows!) are a huge ecological problem.

The question is: how do we best convince people that rattlesnakes are valuable and that they deserve to exist?

Let’s consider a recent interaction I had with a client while removing a rattlesnake from her property. As I eased the placid snake into a bucket, she asked what I was going to do with it. I explained that I would relocate it on public land a short distance down the road. Her eyes got wide and she asked, 

“Why? Rattlesnakes are bad.”

This is far from the first time that I’ve gotten this reaction. I have a lot of experience answering that question, but each time I do it, I always feel later like I could have done a better job.

How do I best tailor my response to the individual who is asking the question?

How do I avoid coming across as preachy or know-it-all?

How do I sneakily manipulate this person’s mind to open, just a little, so I can plant a seed of appreciation for rattlesnakes inside?

How can I be the best possible #RattlesnakePR rep?

In this post, I have created a brief list of the arsenal of strategies that I have curated over the years to combat snake misinformation. While there are certainly others, these are the five strategies that I have used (or seen others use) most often. 

Importantly, I did not come up with most of these, but rather have soaked up ideas from others and amended them according to my own experience. My experience has drawn heavily from several groups, including Advocates for Snake Preservation, which is my absolute favorite #RattlesnakePR rep because they have come up with some of the most effective ways to change people’s minds about snakes (more on that soon); Save the Snakes, which is one of the few groups working internationally to promote the interests of snakes; and the Orianne Society, which recently began a campaign entitled Rattlesnakes: Protect-Educate-Conserve (I’m pretty sure I was the first person to buy one of the T-shirts!). 

If I’ve learned one thing as a teacher that helps me as a #RattlesnakePR rep, it is that I must never assume that I have learned everything or that I have finally gotten to be the best I can be at anything. There is always room to learn and improve. So, I am eager to hear responses to these ideas so I can keep improving my approach to helping rattlesnakes.

#RattlesnakePR Strategies

1. The Ecosystem Services Approach

A Pacific rattlesnake eats a California ground squirrel. Photo by Matt Holding.

This is by far the most commonly leveraged response to the question “what good are rattlesnakes?” I’ve used it many times, and I’ve seen it used many times.

The details: Rattlesnakes are important members of the ecosystem. They provide ecosystem services in three main ways: (1) They eat many, many small mammals and thus help maintain integrity of the food web. As mesopredators, or sometimes even top predators, rattlesnakes help to keep populations of herbivores like squirrels, mice, and rabbits at healthy levels. Removal of rattlesnakes from an ecosystem could lead to a spike in herbivores, causing them to denude vegetation and disrupting ecosystem balance. (2) Many of the small mammals eaten by rattlesnakes are hosts for ectoparasites that carry diseases. Rattlesnakes may therefore help control the spread of Lyme disease by eating so many of the rodents that act as reservoirs for the disease-causing bacteria. (3) Rattlesnakes may disperse seeds and help plants spread. When a rodent eats a seed, its digestive system usually digests the seed to access nutrients. However, when a rattlesnake eats a rodent that has eaten a seed, it may “rescue” that seed from digestion by the rodent because the snake’s digestive tract will not digest the seed. In fact, the snake will move around and eventually poop out the intact seed along with the remains of the rodent’s body, thereby effectively rescuing the seed from predation, dispersing the seed away from its parent plant, and fertilizing it in the process!

There are several potential problems with this approach. Some biologists suggest that we should not rely on ecosystem services to defend biodiversity because it only promotes “useful” organisms. More important to me is the question of whether this approach works. Do people really care if snakes control mice around their house? I’d say, not really. Most people would buy some rodent poison and not give it another thought. Do people care about snakes pooping out baby plants? They might think it’s neat, but it’s not going to effect a frameshift in the way they think about rattlesnakes. More on this later.

2. The Biomedical Breakthrough Approach

The drug Integrilin is used to prevent blood clots during certain surgeries, and is made using a compound isolated from Pygmy rattlesnake venom. Photo of the stunning rattlesnake by James Adam.

From the first mass-produced antibiotic, a mold called penicillin, which was (allegedly) discovered on accident by a messy biologist, to the extraction of a compound from the bark of Pacific Yew trees that has been developed into paclitaxel (Taxol®), the most widely used breast cancer drug, the natural world has provided a huge array of drugs. Venoms in particular have supplied or inspired numerous drugs, and rattlesnakes refuse to be left out of that party. Eptifibatide (Integrilin®) is a drug isolated from pygmy rattlesnake venom, and is used to prevent clots and heart attacks in people who are at risk for these conditions, especially when they are undergoing an angioplasty to remove blockages in coronary arteries. Given that rattlesnake venom is a cocktail of so many compounds, there are likely many additional drugs waiting to be discovered in their venoms. Also, recent developments in machine learning promise to facilitate much faster rates of drug discovery than previous methods. What drugs are waiting to be coaxed from a snake’s venom gland into the arsenal of medical professionals? Aside from venom, are future medical discoveries hiding inside rattlesnakes? If rattlesnakes and other organisms continue to be needlessly persecuted, we may never know.

3. The Threat Approach

Striking Timber rattlesnake. Photo by E. Degginger.

Scientists and snake-wranglers often tell people to leave rattlesnakes alone because they are more likely to be bitten if they try to kill the rattlesnake than if they just ignore it and let it go about its business. I have mixed feelings on this approach. Certainly it’s true that a large number of bites are illegitimate, meaning that the person was purposefully handling the snake when the bite occurred. However, we do not have data on how many bite victims were trying to kill the snake as opposed to messing with it for another reason. I like this approach when trying to discourage people from handling snakes they see out in nature. However, if a rattlesnake is in someone’s yard, most people will say that they want the snake to be removed to protect their children, their pets, and themselves. (The writer of this lovely recent article in the New York Times enjoyed seeing a coiled timber rattlesnake on the porch of her vacation home, but might have felt differently if it had been at her regular home with kids and pets around.) Ideally, calling a professional snake rescuer is ideal, but if that is not an option then the person will need to handle the situation themselves. This involves either relocating the snake by carefully moving it into a bucket or trashcan and releasing it in nearby habitat, or killing the snake. Both likely pose similar risks. So, I tend to feel it is a bit disingenuous to tell people that killing snakes is dangerous, so they should relocate it instead. I prefer to focus on other reasons why relocation is superior.

4. The Ethical Approach

This approach revolves around the notion that rattlesnakes have a right to live, just like every other organism. There is a huge amount of literature on biodiversity ethics, but I will spare you the details and tell you that this approach does not seem to work for rattlesnakes when used on its own. Stepping out of my academic bubble has shown me that most people cannot understand how a rattlesnake, an animal that society has taught them to fear, and is likely the only potentially deadly wildlife they are likely to encounter, could have the right to live unless it has some sort of value. I think this is why so many of us adopt the ecosystem services approach. We are desperately trying to get people to attach a value to a rattlesnake. However, as explained above, most people would feel like buying a $10 box of rodent poison is a much safer investment than promoting the wellbeing of rodent-predating rattlesnakes.

So, how to make people care about rattlesnakes? This leads to my final (and favorite!) approach.

5. The Friends & Family Approach

This approach never occurred to me until I heard it from my colleague Melissa Amarello, founder of Advocates for Snake Preservation. Melissa spends a huge amount of time and effort thinking about #RattlesnakePR, and she came up with a very interesting, and in my opinion very effective, idea. It embodies the idea that the ecosystem services approach doesn’t work, and instead we should appeal to people in a way that actually works. She described it in a recent article in the Arizona Sun:

-Melissa Amarello, Advocates for Snake Preservation, from Arizona Sun article published June 8, 2020

In other words, why not tell people about the neat social lives of rattlesnakes to appeal to their emotions?

After I heard this idea, I started telling people that female rattlesnakes have live birth, and that the babies are born with little umbilical cords just like human babies. Then the moms take care of the babies for a couple of weeks, defending them from predators while they are most vulnerable before their first shed. I tell them how we have recently learned that rattlesnakes appear to hang out with their friends and their family members, and that we are just learning about their complex social lives. I tell them how rattlesnakes can live to be 60 years old, and killing an adult might mean that you have killed an animal that has been peacefully eating rodents and hanging around with their friends and family for decades.

An Arizona Black rattlesnake with her babies. Photo by Jeff Smith.

While this approach has not been tested empirically (this would make an excellent graduate student project!!), I can affirm that it seems to work. Sometimes people say things like, “Maybe I’ll call you to relocate a snake next time I see one instead of killing it.” Sometimes people send me photos months after a presentation, excitedly showing me a rattlesnake they encountered on a hike (and did not kill). Melissa recounts how a Boy Scout leader told her she had changed his mind about rattlesnakes:

-Melissa Amarello, Advocates for Snake Preservation, from Arizona Sun article published June 8, 2020

Back to the client who earnestly asked me why I was going to relocate the “bad” rattlesnake instead of killing it. What did I say to her? I gave her a response something like this, which combines all the most effective bits of what I’ve written above with the hope that at least one part of it would appeal to her.

“Rattlesnakes are not bad! They don’t want to bite you- look at this snake, she's not coming after us, she is scared of us and she only wants to defend herself. Rattlesnakes are important members of the community- they eat thousands of rodents that would otherwise eat our crops and spread diseases like Lyme Disease. Their venom has been used to make a drug that prevents heart attacks, and many more potential drugs based on rattlesnake venom are being investigated. This rattlesnake is probably at least 10 years old and can live as long as 60 years, and this summer she will get pregnant, have live babies (complete with umbilical cords!), and care for them for a couple of weeks before they head out on their own. Rattlesnakes hang out with friends and family members their whole lives, and of course it would be terrible if someone killed off our friends or family members! Plus, it’s dangerous to try to kill rattlesnakes, as most bites happen when people are intentionally messing with the snakes. It's best to stay away from rattlesnakes and let them go about their lives."

A large male Pacific rattlesnake sits quietly as I take his photograph. 

Fellow #RattlesnakePR reps, please feel free to adopt these ideas, tweak them, test them out, give feedback, and share with others. I hope people will share their experiences in the comments, and I will edit this post with good suggestions so we all have a resource on how to improve our #RattlesnakePR.