Re: Woman Has Sex With Snake
Josephine Heathershaw
When I am at work doing public education programs with our reptiles, I get all sorts of crazy questions and statements from our guests. There are countless myths and misunderstandings about reptiles, especially snakes, which has given rise to much of the fear people have for these creatures. That's why I feel my job is so important; by just providing a little clarification and information, I am able to calm many of the fears and dispel much of the dislike people have for these amazingly important animals. After all, the first step towards conservation is education!
I've heard quite a few stories that people swear to be true, but there is one urban legend in particular that I hear. ALL. THE. TIME. And most of the time, the guest recounting the story promises me that it MUST be true. Many of you have likely heard this tale at some point or another (it's been around for ages!):
Okay, so hopefully you read through that, had yourself a good laugh and understood that it's a made up tale with a cheesy moral (something about recognizing the true motivations of others). Unfortunately, there are many people who do believe this tale to be a true account; this, of course, does nothing to lessen their fear of these animals. I must then not only inform them that the story is just that, but I must also explain WHY the legend is completely bogus. So here are just a few reasons why this tale is complete fiction.
So unlikely that the debate rages whether or not it is even physically possible. While snakes can flex their jaws to swallow food much larger than their own heads, the human body presents a major obstacle: our broad, non-collapsible shoulders. Even the largest snakes (up to 30 feet) would have pretty much zero chance of getting their mouth around our shoulders, never mind the four meter snake in the legend. Look at the photo below; that's a huge snake but it would never be able to swallow any of the people holding it! Perhaps a snake could eat a human, but it would have to be the unlucky meeting of an absolutely massive snake and a smaller-than-average human with narrow shoulders. (Earlier this year, an Indonesian reticulated python was believed to have eaten a man. Experts point out that if the story is true, it is because the victim was a native Agta, hunter-gatherer tribesmen who are physically small as adults). (Source)
A snake doesn't really think ahead when it comes to food. If it sees reasonable prey, it will simply try to eat it right then and there. In fact, they don't really even plan out any means of cathing their prey! It'll just slither in and grab it or just wait until it comes close and grab it. If the snake had in anyway considered the woman to be a meal, it would have just crawled into the bed and immediately eaten her that first night. Even if a snake has just eaten it won't pass up on another meal (who knows when the next meal will be?). No snake would ever pass up a meal just so it can eat something even bigger later like the one in the story. They certainly do not save their food for later or plan out what and how they plan to kill. Snakes just live in the moment.
Imagine how successful a snake would be if it routinely lined itself up along its intended prey when hunting. It would quickly starve as no animal is going to sit idly by while a predator snuggles up next to them. For a snake, it's just grab then eat. Generally, they are able to swallow most anything they kill, but every now and again a snake will bite off more than it can chew. I've seen snakes that took on prey that was just slightly too large, fight to swallow it for a little while, and eventually admit defeat and regurgitate the meal. However, such cases are quite unusual; in most instances, snakes can work down any prey they catch with a little work. But there's no measuring involved, just grab and hope you can work it down!
Okay, so we know that snakes just don't behave the way the python portrayed in the story does. But even urban legends tend to be based at least a little bit on a truth. Is there any kernel of fact to this tale?
Let's suppose you own a python or other large snake and decided to let it freely roam your home (not a great idea, but hey it's your hypothetical snake). It would not be too surprising to wake up and find the snake lying up against you in the bed. But if it's not trying to eat you, what is it doing? Is it looking for companionship like a cat or dog?
Nope! The snake would be there for one reason: heat. Snakes are ectothermic (cold-blooded) meaning that they rely on their environment to regulate their body temperature. If they get to cold, they must move to find a warmer place. As an endotherm (warm-blooded), we are practically a living furnace, producing our own heat from within. Any snake would be happy to make use of this heat source if they can (our program snakes seem to enjoy being handled because they are exposed to our body heat...we're basically like a big heated tree!). Pythons especially have heat pits on their upper lips that allow them to see with a sort of thermal vision. To a python, a warm human would be practically glowing with heat! The snake would very likely look to crawl up against that person to keep itself warm.
So this story is just a story; by and large it just doesn't reflect true snake behavior. Hopefully you all enjoyed this little article (I probably relay this information to guests on a weekly basis but what can you do?), and maybe even learned something new about these animals. There are countless similar tales that drive the general fear and dislike of reptiles, so hopefully we can begin combating them with a little bit of good ol' fashion education!
I've also heard that myth. Great Post. I have recently moved to the country and have seen more snakes in the last 3 months than in my entire life. It's considered swamp land here, and I have a pond on my property, so I see black racers and banded water snakes all the time. I learned very quickly to identify the dangerous ones by their eyes. Haven't run into any poisonous snakes yet, so I generally let them be.
The Department of Music, with Charlotte New Music, hosts the world premiere performance of Hebionna (Snake Woman), a Japanese opera by the composer Asako Hirabayashi. The production features UNC Charlotte voice professor Brian Arreola in the lead tenor role of "Yoshizo"; music students and recent alumni Chrystle Villaflor, Sophia Chacon Marmolejos, Christian Souza, and Zach Voigt as a chorus of "villagers"; adjunct professor Alan Yamamoto as the narrator; and cello professor Mira Frisch as a member of the instrumental ensemble.
Inspired by Japanese folk tales, Hebionna tells the story of a country man who saves a snake caught by a trap. Later, the snake, disguised as a woman, shows her gratitude to him. They fall in love, get married, and start a family. But when the villagers learn that the woman is in fact a snake, violence ensues.
"Hebionna is about diversity, discrimination, segregation, unconditional love, benevolence, and the coexistence of nature and human beings," writes Hirabayashi, who wrote both the libretto and the music.
Sung in Japanese, the opera introduces Japanese culture and features the Japanese instrument, the shamisen, performed by guest artist Momokusu Iwata (pictured). Soprano Momoko Niemi Tanno sings the role of Miko, the snake woman.
Atala is just on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, no more than a half-hour drive from the city center. We drove north on the road to Cuttack, through light-industrial suburbs, passing stores advertising things like STEELIUM: COLD ROLLED STEEL, and when we came to the canal we left the highway and followed a rutted and pitted red-dirt road fringed by rice paddies.
On the other side of the canal was the northernmost fringe of Bhubaneswar, with rows of finished houses, but on this side there were only haphazardly placed concrete husks, overgrown with weeds, banana trees, and palms. Sheep, goats, and water buffalo grazed in the lots. A sign read HEMALATA PARADISE. GLORIOUS PLOTED SCHEME. In the paddies, egrets with giant white wings balanced on spindly legs. Men and boys bathed themselves in the greenish-black waters of the canal, outnumbered by the water buffalo. The land was absolutely flat in every direction.
We parked the car on the edge of a grassy field beside a small concrete shack, which on further investigation turned out to be a temple of the god Shiva, and were soon approached by some young people. One of the braver ones came up to us, and Deepak said something to him in Oriya.
Before long there were many people around us: perhaps fifteen children and a dozen adults, their numbers quickly swelling. It was a peaceful crowd. Soon everybody was laughing and talking, then the villagers were pushing at each other in a good-natured way to see us, and kids were shinnying up bamboo stalks. I had my notebook in my hand, but the conversation was entirely in Oriya. When I asked Deepak what the people were saying, he had a very persuasive way of putting up one hand to shush me.
Atala, it was easy to see, was a village where marriage mattered. On the main street, where the upper-caste people lived, cement-and-brick house after cement-and-brick house advertised the weddings to come or the weddings recently celebrated: on the front of one house was painted, in English, ARUNA TIES SASMITA, above a drawing of a pair of tabla drums, a horn, and a peacock. Another house said, WELCOME, WEDDING, and showed the same gay images, this time adding a conch shell. On a third house, the names JHILITA and SURYA NARAYA were joined by a drawing of a pair of hands very warmly shaking.
Ophiolatry, the anthropologist Sadhu Charan Panda notes, is perhaps the oldest of religions. There is evidence of snake worship in the antiquity of just about every place where there are snakes: one of the first challenges for the authors of Genesis was to confront the cult of the snake.
The worship of the cobra in modern India is particularly associated with the god Shiva, one of the more impressive and terrifying of the Hindu pantheon: Shiva, who looks not a little like a blue-skinned Rastafarian with his dreadlocked hair and stoned eyes, traditionally wears a cobra draped around his neck. But Shiva is a relative newcomer to the villages of India; the oldest Hindu religious texts, the Vedas, do not mention him.
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