Science: Rattlesnakes, A to Z

If anyone wants to know how to milk rattlesnakes, or how they taste French-fried, or whether their rattle is a love call, the place to find the answers is a monstrous (1,500 pp.) book called Rattlesnakes, published last week by Laurence M. Klauber (University of California Press; $17.50). The book covers rattlesnakes from A (Crotalus viridis abyssus) to Z (Crotalus zetazomae).

Milking rattlesnakes of their venom is relatively easy. During his 35 years as consulting curator of reptiles at the San Diego Zoo, Klauber milked 5,171 of them by opening their mouths with a metal claw, hooking their fangs over the edge of a cup and pressing out the contents of their poison glands. The venom, he says, is almost odorless. Its taste is first astringent, then turns sweetish. It makes the lips tingle a little.

Ethereal Delights. Rattlesnake venom, says Klauber, has, at various times, been considered a cure for epilepsy, bronchitis, pneumonia, neuralgia, lumbago, sciatica, cholera, yellow fever, leprosy and elephantiasis. Pills made out of the poison glands ground up and mixed with cheese were once prescribed for palsy and typhus; they also give a feeling of “ethereal delights.” Rattlesnake oil was once a popular remedy, too, but both venom and oil have now fallen out of medical favor. The chief modern use for the venom is to immunize horses so their serum can be used to cure rattlesnake bites.

Klauber tells how rattlesnakes hunt. Their eyes are pretty good, but in darkness they depend on the “pits” in the sides of their heads. These are true senses, responding to infra-red (heat) radiation like soldiers’ snooperscopes. In the darkest night or at the bottom of the darkest burrow, the snake can “see” a mouse or a squirrel by the warmth of its skin.

It can also smell its prey without breathing. When the snake’s forked tongue flicks in and out, it conveys odor-laden air to smell organs inside the mouth. After the snake has sunk its fangs in a small, warm animal, it does not try to hold it. The animal runs a few feet or yards until the poison brings it down. Then the snake follows by scent, flicking its delicate tongue, and starts the slow business of swallowing the meal. The injected venom contains a substance that starts the digestive process before the animal reaches the snake’s stomach.

Male Dance. Baby rattlesnakes are born alive, hatching from eggs retained in the mother’s body. More vicious than the grownups, they strike with their tiny fangs at the slightest provocation. Mother rattlesnakes do not take care of their young. The rattle is a simple warning, not a love call, and males take only the briefest interest in the females. But male rattlesnakes have the odd custom of “wrestling” together, swaying their heads and bodies with a graceful rhythmic motion. The defeated snake is never bitten or otherwise hurt. Klauber is not sure of the purpose of the wrestling match. He thinks it may have some connection with mating, but admits that the emotions of rattlesnakes are hard to analyze.

Popular remedies for rattlesnake bite are as numerous as the diseases that venom was once supposed to cure. Klauber lists onions, garlic, chewed tobacco, ammonia, kerosene, gunpowder, nitric acid, lye, quicklime, and freshly killed chickens, split and applied to the wound. All such nostrums are useless, as is the classic remedy, whisky, which Klauber thinks has killed many snakebite victims who would have recovered if left untreated. The only effective drug is antivenin, which must be used with care. Best first-aid treatment is a ligature or tourniquet to isolate the bitten part of the body. The wound should be enlarged to promote bleeding, and as much of the poison as possible should be sucked out of it. Then the patient should be taken to a doctor.

Only about 1,000 Americans a year are bitten by rattlesnakes, and of these only 30 die. But this record, says Klauber, should not encourage amateurs to get familiar with rattlesnakes. Even men who handle them professionally, he says, are often bitten. An apparently dead rattlesnake should never be touched carelessly; it may revive and strike. Even a severed head can bite for half an hour.

Rattlesnakes do not make good pets, Klauber warns solemnly. When caressed with the hand or stroked with a brush, they sometimes arch their backs, but this apparent appreciation should not be depended upon. Klauber tells of a woman, Mrs. Grace O. Wiley, who petted her snakes and enjoyed seeing them arch their backs like cats. “Her fearless handling of venomous snakes,” he says, “was well known, yet . . . even in her case, after many years of experience, there was a fatal termination.”