There are few snakes as feared as the rattlesnake, but according to a new study, they might be sweeter and more affectionate creatures than you might have guessed. A new study has measured the stress levels of rattlesnakes and found something quite strange when more than one of them are captured together.
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00:00There are few snakes as feared as the rattlesnake, but according to a new study, they might be sweeter and more affectionate creatures than you might have guessed.
00:11This is Earth and Biological Sciences Professor William Hayes, who has studied snakes for years.
00:16You know, it seemed to me that driving down a mountain with rattlesnakes, if I had more than one in a bucket, they were quieter.
00:24So he and his team decided to test why that might be the case, attaching electrodes to rattlesnakes to measure their stress levels.
00:30And what they found was that when rattlesnakes were accompanied by others of their kind, their stress baselines were lower than when alone.
00:36Here's one of the researchers, Ph.D. candidate Chelsea Martin, to explain.
00:40Well, I mean, it tells us that when they are with another snake, that they can reduce their stress response, which, as Bill said, has never been reported in reptiles before.
00:49And, you know, this is something that humans do as well.
00:53She adds this is key in really driving home that other species, even ones that don't seem that social, aren't much different with regards to stress responses than humans.
01:01And that's a big change for rattlesnakes in particular, as Dr. Hayes says they were previously thought of as being more like robots, simply responding to stimuli without emotion.