Sara Ruane, a reptile and amphibian curator at the Field Museum, rates snake attacks in movies based on their realism.
She separates fact from fiction regarding whether you can suck venom out of a snake bite in "Babylon" (2022), starring Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt; and "True Grit" (2010), starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, and Matt Damon. She explains how anacondas and pythons catch and consume their prey, as seen in "Anaconda" (1997), starring Jon Voight, Jennifer Lopez, and Ice Cube; and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (2001), starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Alan Rickman. She advises on how to avoid getting bit by a cobra, as seen in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), starring Harrison Ford. She breaks down the differences between venomous and nonvenomous snakes in "Snakes on a Plane" (2006), starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kenan Thompson, and Julianna Margulies. She looks at the way different characters seek to treat snake bites in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" (2004), starring Uma Thurman, Michael Madsen, and Daryl Hannah; and "Mud" (2012), starring Matthew McConaughey. She talks about how antivenom works in "Bullet Train" (2022), starring Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Bad Bunny.
Thanks to the Field Museum's Amphibians & Reptiles Department for loaning specimens for the shoot: https://www.fieldmuseum.org/department/amphibians-reptiles
Follow Sara here:
https://twitter.com/Sara_and_Snakes
https://sararuane.com/
She separates fact from fiction regarding whether you can suck venom out of a snake bite in "Babylon" (2022), starring Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt; and "True Grit" (2010), starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, and Matt Damon. She explains how anacondas and pythons catch and consume their prey, as seen in "Anaconda" (1997), starring Jon Voight, Jennifer Lopez, and Ice Cube; and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (2001), starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Alan Rickman. She advises on how to avoid getting bit by a cobra, as seen in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), starring Harrison Ford. She breaks down the differences between venomous and nonvenomous snakes in "Snakes on a Plane" (2006), starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kenan Thompson, and Julianna Margulies. She looks at the way different characters seek to treat snake bites in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" (2004), starring Uma Thurman, Michael Madsen, and Daryl Hannah; and "Mud" (2012), starring Matthew McConaughey. She talks about how antivenom works in "Bullet Train" (2022), starring Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Bad Bunny.
Thanks to the Field Museum's Amphibians & Reptiles Department for loaning specimens for the shoot: https://www.fieldmuseum.org/department/amphibians-reptiles
Follow Sara here:
https://twitter.com/Sara_and_Snakes
https://sararuane.com/
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TechTranscript
00:00 (slicing)
00:02 (screeching)
00:04 Trying to suck the venom out of a snake bite,
00:07 it doesn't matter what kind of snake it is.
00:09 It is absolutely useless.
00:11 I'm Dr. Sarah Ruan, and I'm the assistant curator
00:14 of reptiles and amphibians at the Field Museum
00:17 in Chicago, Illinois.
00:18 Today, we're gonna look at snake attacks in movies
00:21 and judge how real they are.
00:22 - What the?
00:25 - I think a snake could end up in someone's luggage
00:29 accidentally, and then it gets out,
00:31 or it could be just stow away somewhere in the plane itself.
00:36 Snakes are pretty good at getting into really small places,
00:39 and they are really secretive,
00:41 so they could be there for a long time
00:43 and you just wouldn't even know it.
00:44 (slicing)
00:46 There's so many species of snakes in this scene.
00:52 They are a mixture of harmless snakes
00:54 that aren't gonna cause any problems for anybody.
00:57 So those are milk snakes falling out of the ceiling,
00:59 maybe a corn snake, some of the most common pet snakes
01:02 that people keep.
01:03 Even if a snake isn't venomous,
01:06 one of the ways it'll defend itself when it is cornered
01:09 is by striking and biting.
01:11 Snakes actually have pretty weak jaw musculature
01:14 with respect to chomping down,
01:16 because they don't chew their food.
01:17 They swallow everything whole.
01:19 If the snake doesn't have fangs, if it's not venomous,
01:22 and all it has are these tiny little teeth,
01:24 and it was to bite down on you,
01:27 it's really not that big of a deal.
01:29 (sizzling)
01:31 - Yes sir, I'm soaking the laser with it.
01:33 The pheromone will make these guys go (beep) crazy.
01:37 - The use of pheromones to make these snakes act so wild
01:42 is not realistic.
01:43 Pheromones in snakes are very poorly understood,
01:48 but pheromone work has been done across squamates,
01:51 which is the group that contains snakes and lizards,
01:53 and so some work on geckos has shown
01:55 that they absolutely do use pheromones to communicate.
01:58 Typically, pheromones are going to have a lot to do
02:01 with mates, finding mates, mate selection,
02:05 maybe even combat between males versus males,
02:08 or females versus females over potential mates,
02:12 but as far as being aggressive towards other species,
02:15 that is really unlikely.
02:17 I'm gonna give snakes on a plane a four for realism.
02:22 I like that there are actually some real snakes
02:25 used in the movie, but the behavior of these snakes
02:29 is a really bad look for snakes and totally inaccurate.
02:32 (dramatic music)
02:35 If human can outrun pretty much every snake that exists,
02:40 flat out, an anaconda certainly can't chase down a person.
02:44 (dramatic music)
02:53 This anaconda has a lot of upper body strength
02:57 that a real anaconda would not be able to muster up,
03:01 particularly out of the water.
03:02 Anacondas are primarily aquatic,
03:06 and they reach massive, massive girths,
03:08 and one of the reasons they're able to do that
03:10 is because they live in the water,
03:12 and the water supports that body weight.
03:15 So the anaconda in this movie seems gargantuan in size.
03:18 It seems maybe that it's somewhere in the 40-foot range,
03:22 and although anacondas are thought to be able
03:25 to approach approximately 30 feet,
03:28 the reality is that as far as legitimate documentation
03:31 that has not been questioned,
03:35 20, 25 feet is a lot more realistic.
03:38 (dramatic music)
03:41 If they are on the larger side, and you are by yourself,
03:48 and one was to wrap around you,
03:50 you need a second person there to get out of that.
03:52 It wouldn't be undoable if you have a second person
03:56 who can start unwrapping the snake,
03:58 but by yourself, you actually are pretty limited
04:01 in what you can do to get out of that situation.
04:03 Snakes typically that constrict
04:07 are going to fully kill whatever it is
04:09 they're trying to eat before they start
04:10 actually consuming it.
04:12 By constricting their food first,
04:14 then it takes away the ability for the prey to do anything.
04:17 (dramatic music)
04:21 (snake growling)
04:23 In reality, that snake is gonna be taking its time
04:26 when it's feeding, and given the way snake skulls
04:29 are put together, it's not a simple process.
04:32 People talk a lot about snakes unhinging their jaws
04:36 when they feed, but the reality is that their jaws
04:39 are not actually attached to start with.
04:42 So the upper skull is all one piece,
04:45 but the lower jaws actually sit in a little groove
04:48 on each side.
04:49 The lower jaw of a snake is the same thing
04:51 where it can stretch out very, very wide.
04:54 And so this stretchy ligament allows the snake
04:56 not just to open its jaws very wide horizontally.
05:00 In this clip, when the snake is feeding,
05:02 it seems to just be gulping down the human,
05:06 but in reality, in order to pull that person down
05:10 into their digestive tract and down their throat,
05:13 that snake is actually going to be using one jaw at a time.
05:17 And then once it really gets down into the throat
05:20 where there's a lot of musculature,
05:21 it can start using those muscles in the same way
05:25 that we swallow something, but it takes a while
05:28 before that sort of natural reflexive action takes over.
05:32 So I give anaconda a four because the way
05:35 that anaconda moves around and its speed
05:38 is incredibly unrealistic.
05:40 Anacondas are not out looking to eat people anyway.
05:43 (dramatic music)
05:47 (snake hissing)
05:50 What we're seeing is a mixture
05:56 of sort of heavy-bodied snakes, boas and pythons,
05:59 and then a bunch of legless lizards
06:01 that aren't snakes at all.
06:02 Snakes are just a kind of lizard.
06:04 And so if we were to look at a family tree
06:06 of snakes and lizards, snakes are just within it.
06:09 (dramatic music)
06:12 The snake sitting there like that and looking defensive
06:16 but not really doing anything is pretty accurate.
06:18 Snakes are doing almost everything
06:20 in their power to not bite.
06:23 Venom is only used defensively
06:25 as a secondary defensive system.
06:28 Snakes primarily use venom to acquire prey
06:31 and to kill it in a safe way.
06:33 To avoid getting bit in a situation like that,
06:35 staying still is a good strategy to start with.
06:38 Staying calm, no herky-jerky motions.
06:41 Anything that's gonna startle the snake
06:42 is more likely to make it bite
06:44 because it's gonna get scared.
06:46 And then just trying to back away very slowly and calmly
06:49 would be the next step.
06:50 (dramatic music)
06:53 So that's a python and it's just hanging out.
06:59 That seems pretty realistic.
07:01 That's what most snakes do.
07:02 Most snakes, even if you're up close in their face,
07:05 are gonna remain pretty calm
07:07 if they can avoid having to do anything.
07:09 One of the best ways snakes defend themselves
07:11 is by not moving and hoping you don't really see them.
07:14 I'm going to give it a five.
07:16 What I like about this clip is that the snakes,
07:19 for the most part, are acting the way snakes do.
07:21 These snakes are mostly just minding their own business.
07:23 Maybe they are striking a little bit
07:26 when Indiana Jones is actually kind of harassing them.
07:30 But even the cobra doesn't do anything
07:32 and that's really quite realistic.
07:34 I have to take some points off
07:35 because most of the animals in this clip
07:37 aren't snakes at all.
07:38 - Can you hear me?
07:40 (dramatic music)
07:43 - Snakes really don't hear the way that we do.
07:46 If you have a pet snake,
07:48 you're not gonna teach this snake its name
07:50 and it's gonna look up at you
07:51 and recognize that you're even talking to it.
07:54 That being said, snakes can feel vibrations,
07:56 particularly through their lower jaw bones,
07:59 so they can feel something like a footfall.
08:01 And there is certainly evidence
08:03 that snakes do hear super, super low frequencies,
08:06 but the human range is not something
08:08 that snakes are picking up on.
08:10 Flicking their tongues is how snakes
08:12 are tasting everything in their environment
08:14 and bringing those odor molecules back into their mouth
08:17 and letting their brain process what it is that's around.
08:20 So even if they can't see it,
08:23 they are able to sense when something is there,
08:25 whether that's something to worry about, like a predator,
08:27 or whether it's something to be excited about,
08:30 like maybe a potential mate,
08:32 or whether it's something to eat.
08:33 (screaming)
08:36 This snake is in a zoo environment.
08:40 It's probably incredibly used to people
08:43 and it's probably very well fed.
08:45 If I was to fall in there,
08:46 I would just keep an eye on the snake
08:49 and just calmly get myself out, just climb on back out.
08:53 (dramatic music)
08:55 They act the way I'd expect people to act,
09:01 jumping on furniture, trying to get out of the way.
09:05 If a snake wanted to do something to a person, though,
09:09 because it felt defensive
09:10 or whether it thought it was gonna eat somebody,
09:12 which is really unlikely,
09:14 climbing up on something is probably not an effective way
09:17 to get away from it.
09:19 But again, you could just kind of walk away quickly.
09:23 The snake's not likely to follow you.
09:25 It portrays the snake as very calm and docile,
09:28 which is pretty realistic.
09:30 The blinking, the hearing,
09:32 that's not accurate whatsoever.
09:36 But because they portray the snake so nicely,
09:38 I'm still gonna give it a six.
09:39 (dramatic music)
09:42 That snake in the clip looks like
09:47 it is very deliberately coming over,
09:50 sinking its front two fangs only into her
09:53 with the express purpose of biting her.
09:55 And that's a really weird thing to try to portray
09:58 because that's really not how snakes bite.
10:00 They're gonna engage both their upper and lower jaws
10:03 and bite fully.
10:04 In the United States, getting bit on the hand
10:07 or on the ankle or leg
10:08 tends to be where people get bit the most.
10:11 Cutting a cross or an X or a slash into a snake bite wound
10:18 is something that you see even in medical advice
10:22 for snake bite kits when you go back in time a little bit.
10:26 But the reality is that doing that
10:28 is only causing you more problems.
10:30 What people think when they do that
10:31 is they're gonna make a nice incision
10:33 so they can start trying to suck that venom out
10:35 and really get it all out there.
10:37 Venom really needs to be injected
10:42 into the circulatory system, into the tissue directly
10:46 for it to be effective.
10:47 And so you could,
10:48 assuming you don't have any sores in your mouth
10:51 or an ulcer maybe,
10:53 something that's allowing that venom to get into you,
10:55 you could eat snake venom
10:57 and you would theoretically be totally fine.
10:59 And that's what makes venom different from poison.
11:02 Poison is something that you ingest it.
11:05 You have to eat it.
11:06 And then it is able to penetrate into your body
11:09 through your stomach or through sublingually in your mouth.
11:12 This character ultimately is unable to get help in time
11:16 to totally negate the effects of the venom
11:19 and ends up having to lose her arm.
11:20 If somebody gets bit by a snake, like a rattlesnake,
11:24 and is unable to get treatment relatively quickly,
11:28 it's not a death sentence.
11:29 However, that hemotoxic venom
11:33 is gonna start eating away at the tissue
11:36 where the bite site is,
11:37 and it's gonna cause issues such as gangrene, rotting,
11:41 and ultimately it may result in an amputation
11:44 even if you don't die from it.
11:46 So this is realistic in that this is what somebody might do
11:50 if they saw somebody get bit by a snake,
11:52 even if it's not the best treatment.
11:54 So I'm gonna give this a six.
11:58 (snake hissing)
12:01 (beep)
12:02 So that's not a boom slang whatsoever.
12:05 This is a rat snake.
12:06 This is not anything what a boom slang even looks like.
12:10 It's probably the most inaccurate portrayal I've ever seen
12:13 given how many closeups there are
12:16 of a snake that's quite distinctive looking.
12:18 They don't have teeth up in the front of their mouth
12:20 that inject venom.
12:21 Instead, they have these enlarged teeth
12:24 in the back of their mouths.
12:25 They do not have a sophisticated venom delivery system
12:30 like a syringe, the way a rattlesnake does.
12:32 Boom slangs were not known to necessarily be dangerous
12:36 because they don't have these front fangs.
12:38 (snake hissing)
12:41 - 30 seconds before the venom does its thing.
12:48 - You could get yourself a big syringe of snake venom,
12:51 100%, because the way that antivenom is made,
12:54 you have to get venom from the snake species
12:56 you're targeting, and you do that by taking the snake,
12:59 and it's called milking it,
13:00 and basically under controlled circumstances,
13:03 the snake is encouraged or forced to bite.
13:07 Typically, it's like a kind of a rubber sheet
13:10 that is stretched over some sort of vial or cup,
13:13 and the snake bites into it,
13:15 and then the venom starts dripping down into the cup.
13:18 Typically, when you see antivenom administered
13:27 in a movie like "Bullet Train,"
13:29 it's really not how it would go down in real life.
13:32 Antivenom isn't just a, oh, one dose and you're good.
13:35 Typically, you are given a certain number of doses
13:38 based on the severity of the bite
13:40 and the symptoms you're having,
13:42 specifically for the species or a group of species
13:46 that that antivenom was made to work for,
13:49 and you're monitored, and if you keep getting worse,
13:52 they'll give you a little bit more.
13:54 It's also ridiculously expensive.
13:56 It's not something you're just carrying around.
13:58 [screaming]
14:02 Having a dose of antivenom
14:03 and then getting bit relatively soon afterwards,
14:06 it might actually protect you from a subsequent bite.
14:09 One thing I'll point out is that antivenom
14:11 is very good at stopping the venom
14:14 that's circulating in somebody's body,
14:16 but whatever damage has happened typically isn't reversed.
14:25 A boomslang is not a constrictor,
14:27 and it's not necessarily going to wrap around something
14:30 and really hold on tight.
14:31 A rat snake, the snake that this looks like,
14:34 can do something like that,
14:36 but the snake's not gonna hang on for dear life
14:38 given the opportunity to get away.
14:40 I'm gonna give this a one.
14:41 I think this is one of the most unrealistic scenes
14:43 I've ever seen.
14:44 The snake isn't a boomslang.
14:46 The behavior of the snake is not anything like a boomslang.
14:50 The antivenom and how they portray it working
14:53 is totally unrealistic.
14:55 This is the worst one.
14:57 (laughs)
14:57 For accuracy.
14:59 A snake definitely would be able to sort of lunge forward
15:08 and bite someone in the face.
15:10 Mambas are really big, or they can be really big.
15:12 They move pretty fast.
15:14 They do spend some time climbing around,
15:16 and so they do have pretty good ability
15:19 to come right at someone's face from that angle.
15:21 That would not be impossible.
15:23 It is possible that the snake would feel pretty worried
15:25 and defensive being surprised by a human,
15:28 which, from the snake's perspective,
15:30 is probably going to try to kill it
15:31 because that's usually what people try to do to snakes.
15:34 Most snakes posture and only bite
15:36 when they're really pushed towards it,
15:39 but it's certainly not impossible.
15:41 - Bud, I'd like to introduce my friend, the black mamba.
15:49 - Black mamba?
15:49 - Somebody probably wouldn't so instantaneously
15:53 be feeling that bad.
15:55 I mean, they'd feel it, but it wouldn't necessarily
15:57 be just fall on the floor instantaneously bad
16:00 from a mamba bite.
16:01 Venomous snakes come in two main flavors.
16:04 You can have a snake that's neurotoxic
16:05 with respect to its venom or hemotoxic,
16:08 and black mambas fall into the general category
16:11 of neurotoxic.
16:12 Neurotoxic venom is going to cause your nervous system
16:16 to start shutting down, and this occurs
16:18 because the venom molecules sort of glom on
16:22 to our sodium potassium channels and make it
16:25 so that they don't pump efficiently,
16:26 and that's what causes you to have things like paralysis,
16:30 your diaphragm stops being able to function,
16:33 and so you can essentially have no ability
16:36 to breathe anymore.
16:37 This is not a bad clip with respect to realism.
16:41 I'm gonna give this a seven.
16:42 (screaming)
16:46 With snakes like rattlesnakes,
16:51 I'm always going to be very, very, very cautious
16:54 with how they're handled, and I'm never gonna just
16:57 pick up a rattlesnake like that.
16:58 No herpetologist who doesn't wanna end up
17:02 in the hospital would ever do that.
17:04 When snakes bite, they typically strike,
17:07 they make contact, and they let go pretty quickly.
17:11 The only times where you see a snake hanging on like that
17:13 is snakes have these recurved teeth,
17:16 and so because they curve backwards,
17:17 if they manage to kind of sink their teeth into something,
17:21 sometimes they can get a little bit stuck.
17:23 You do, in fact, have to kind of push them forward
17:25 and unhook them because of those recurved teeth.
17:28 That's not a thing that's gonna work.
17:35 You could just do nothing and it would be as effective.
17:38 Trying to suck the venom out of a snake bite,
17:40 it doesn't matter what kind of snake it is.
17:42 It is absolutely useless.
17:44 It just starts acting so fast and dissipating
17:48 through the tissues, through the blood,
17:50 that there's no time to start trying to suck it out,
17:54 and it's not something that is in a capsule
17:58 where you can just get it all out in one big suck.
18:00 Pouring alcohol on it is,
18:05 I can't imagine it really matters,
18:08 and it's certainly not gonna suddenly
18:09 make the person sit up and be okay.
18:11 As far as portraying what a rattlesnake looks like,
18:14 it looks like a legitimate rattlesnake
18:16 as far as the behavior,
18:18 as far as the way they're dealing with the bite,
18:22 totally ineffective.
18:23 I'm gonna give this a five.
18:27 There's no kind of snakes, including cottonmouths,
18:35 that are gonna congregate together
18:37 to hang out on somebody just to bite them.
18:39 If, in fact, that kid, say, tried to pick up a snake
18:43 or fell on a snake and it did end up getting bit,
18:45 no other snakes would show up to check it out
18:47 or get involved.
18:48 That would never happen.
18:49 And the snake that was responsible for the bite,
18:52 the second it was no longer feeling threatened
18:54 or was being harassed,
18:55 it would take off and get out of there.
18:57 - What time is it?
18:59 - Fourteen!
19:00 - Yell it out every 10 minutes.
19:04 - Using that Sharpie and getting the time
19:08 is tracking how the venom is progressing
19:11 through the kid's system
19:13 and seeing how the swelling is progressing,
19:16 and that can be something useful.
19:19 Typically, you see that more in snake bite treatment
19:23 once the person's already at a hospital
19:25 so that they can see if the effects of the venom
19:27 are being slowed down
19:29 and that it has been essentially stopped by treatment,
19:32 typically by antivenom,
19:34 but that's not a bad thing to do.
19:36 The progress of the snake venom
19:39 and the swelling progressing through the kid's leg,
19:42 that seems pretty legitimate.
19:44 You're gonna have swelling.
19:45 Your cells are gonna start doing all sorts of crazy things,
19:49 lysing, popping open, hemorrhaging.
19:52 I'm gonna give this a nine.
19:54 The snakes themselves are not portrayed
19:56 particularly accurately in their behavior,
19:59 but saying, "Let's get this person to the clinic,"
20:01 and then just going to some actual trained medical staff
20:05 is absolutely the right answer,
20:06 and so for that reason alone,
20:08 this gets probably the highest rating I could give.
20:11 My favorite scene watching these clips today
20:14 is "Indiana Jones."
20:15 This is a movie I've seen before,
20:17 but it's only now in retrospect watching it,
20:20 seeing that all of the snakes in the movie,
20:24 for the most part, are actually just legless lizards,
20:27 I found it pretty charming.
20:30 It's fun trying to identify actual real animals
20:33 versus something like "Bullet Train"
20:35 where it's totally inaccurate.
20:36 (silence)
20:38 (silence)
20:41 (silence)
20:43 (silence)
20:45 (silence)
20:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]