Clay Davenport
Cerebral Nomad
Debunking Snakes on a Plane
Five minutes after last night's screening of Snakes On A Plane at Austin's Westgate Cinema, I'm three feet from 17 live snakes, including three venomous Texas species: a coral snake, a diamondback rattler and a copperhead.
The snakes, in a van labelled Austin Reptile Service, belong to lifelong snake fan, rescuer and educator Tim Cole. Cole came to Snakes on a Plane straight from showing his animals to the Hays County chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists. It's what he does.
In four decades of snake capturing and handling, Cole has been bitten only once by a venomous snake - a copperhead (``I did something wrong, the snake didn't'') That was 30 years ago. He's also worked on movies as a snake wrangler. So he approached Snakes on a Plane with both a sense of humor and the fear that the movie would create a lot of unjust fear of snakes.
After the movie, he isn't so worried.
``Most of the snakes were CGI (computer animation),'' he says, confident that most people will recognize that because of the movie snakes' unnatural behavior. ``I liked that they did the animation because it helps people realize it's just a movie. I've had several snake people tell me this is terrible, it's going to give snakes a bad name. But once you've seen it, it's just ludicrous. I think so. I hope so."
I'm not so sure. Movie fans, like myself, want to believe what we see, and our knowledge of snakes is, well, limited.
So we asked Cole to comment on the snakes of Snakes on a Plane. He did. You can also learn more snake myths at his Website. Warning: spoilers ahead.
In the cargo hold, hero Samuel L. Jackson is attacked by a big snake hanging from a rack. Jackson roasts the sucker.
"That was an eastern diamondback rattlesnake," Cole says. ''They are a heavy ground dweller, hanging from something is totally uncharacteristic of them."
* The co-pilot is attacked by large coral snakes that rear and leap for a strike at him. Realistic?
Coral snakes don't act that way, and if the did probably couldn't bite a person who wasn't actually holding them because the tiny snakes have tiny mouths.
``In the cockpit, a lot of those were Arizona coral snakes, except about five times the right size,'' Cole says. ``But the color was right. Most of the movie's snakes were much bigger than their real life counterparts."
• One movie gross out has a gigantic python wrap around a man and crush him in seconds, then open it's jaws wide and swallow his whole head. Believable?
`` That's a Burmese python,'' Cole says, smiling ruefully. ``Python's constrict, they suffocate (their prey), they don't crush it.''
Yeah, yeah, but could it swallow a man whole, like they can a pig?
``They'd never get past the shoulders of an average adult,'' Cole says. ``There's not a snake large enough.''
(Darn. But it still looked totally gross.)
• Ophidiophobia: a fear of snakes. ophiophilia: a love of snakes
• Percent of the snakes in the movie that Cole thought were real: ``about 10.''
• Snake vision in the movie is frequently represented as green-hued and blurry. True or false?
False, says Cole. ``They rely more on smell (through their tongue) but their vision is not that blurry."
Despite the blurred vision, the snakes in SOAP constantly make some very pinpoint - and gross strikes on embarrassing points of the human body, including eyeballs, nipples and a part guys don't even want to hear about.
* In the movie dozens of species of snakes aggressively attack humans by sighting on a victim, moving toward them, then rearing back and striking forward lightening fast, jaws agape. The reason given is that the plane has been sprayed with pheromones, which drive the snakes wild. That's believable. Isn't it?
Alas, Cole says snakes only respond to the pheromones of their own species, not all to one smell. Besides, pheromones would just make the male snakes romantic, not out to kill humans.
The movie says the anti-venom for all the foreign snakes in the movie could only be gotten from other countries.
Not true, Cole says. ``It would be available from any zoo that keeps those species. And there is a venom bank in Miami, Venom One, that keeps anti-venom for everything from all over the world."
• Would each species need a different anti-venom, as the movie claims?
Yes, Cole says, ``If they're exotics, there's not a lot of overlap."
• The movie always calls snakes poisonous? Are most snakes poisonous?
No (thank goodness, on two counts). Most snakes are not harmful, and actually beneficial to the human environment. And technically, no snake is poisonous, they are venomous.
``Poisonous is something you eat,'' Cole says. ``Venomous is something injected. Snakes are venomous.''
The good news, Cole says: no snake behaves the way the Snakes on a Plane snakes do, and only a few really coil and strike.
``Snakes will only attack if they're cornered. None of these snakes was cornered. They were going after people. In real like, they're trying to get away.''
A few snakes, he says, such as the rattlesnake or water moccasin, will not always retreat, confident in their ability to defend themselves, but they still attack humans only when the human gets into their space and they feel threatened.
But what about all those stories we've heard to the contrary?
``One thing is true of all urban legends,'' Cole says, ``They stories always happened to a friend of a friend, never to you.''
Link
Five minutes after last night's screening of Snakes On A Plane at Austin's Westgate Cinema, I'm three feet from 17 live snakes, including three venomous Texas species: a coral snake, a diamondback rattler and a copperhead.
The snakes, in a van labelled Austin Reptile Service, belong to lifelong snake fan, rescuer and educator Tim Cole. Cole came to Snakes on a Plane straight from showing his animals to the Hays County chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists. It's what he does.
In four decades of snake capturing and handling, Cole has been bitten only once by a venomous snake - a copperhead (``I did something wrong, the snake didn't'') That was 30 years ago. He's also worked on movies as a snake wrangler. So he approached Snakes on a Plane with both a sense of humor and the fear that the movie would create a lot of unjust fear of snakes.
After the movie, he isn't so worried.
``Most of the snakes were CGI (computer animation),'' he says, confident that most people will recognize that because of the movie snakes' unnatural behavior. ``I liked that they did the animation because it helps people realize it's just a movie. I've had several snake people tell me this is terrible, it's going to give snakes a bad name. But once you've seen it, it's just ludicrous. I think so. I hope so."
I'm not so sure. Movie fans, like myself, want to believe what we see, and our knowledge of snakes is, well, limited.
So we asked Cole to comment on the snakes of Snakes on a Plane. He did. You can also learn more snake myths at his Website. Warning: spoilers ahead.
In the cargo hold, hero Samuel L. Jackson is attacked by a big snake hanging from a rack. Jackson roasts the sucker.
"That was an eastern diamondback rattlesnake," Cole says. ''They are a heavy ground dweller, hanging from something is totally uncharacteristic of them."
* The co-pilot is attacked by large coral snakes that rear and leap for a strike at him. Realistic?
Coral snakes don't act that way, and if the did probably couldn't bite a person who wasn't actually holding them because the tiny snakes have tiny mouths.
``In the cockpit, a lot of those were Arizona coral snakes, except about five times the right size,'' Cole says. ``But the color was right. Most of the movie's snakes were much bigger than their real life counterparts."
• One movie gross out has a gigantic python wrap around a man and crush him in seconds, then open it's jaws wide and swallow his whole head. Believable?
`` That's a Burmese python,'' Cole says, smiling ruefully. ``Python's constrict, they suffocate (their prey), they don't crush it.''
Yeah, yeah, but could it swallow a man whole, like they can a pig?
``They'd never get past the shoulders of an average adult,'' Cole says. ``There's not a snake large enough.''
(Darn. But it still looked totally gross.)
• Ophidiophobia: a fear of snakes. ophiophilia: a love of snakes
• Percent of the snakes in the movie that Cole thought were real: ``about 10.''
• Snake vision in the movie is frequently represented as green-hued and blurry. True or false?
False, says Cole. ``They rely more on smell (through their tongue) but their vision is not that blurry."
Despite the blurred vision, the snakes in SOAP constantly make some very pinpoint - and gross strikes on embarrassing points of the human body, including eyeballs, nipples and a part guys don't even want to hear about.
* In the movie dozens of species of snakes aggressively attack humans by sighting on a victim, moving toward them, then rearing back and striking forward lightening fast, jaws agape. The reason given is that the plane has been sprayed with pheromones, which drive the snakes wild. That's believable. Isn't it?
Alas, Cole says snakes only respond to the pheromones of their own species, not all to one smell. Besides, pheromones would just make the male snakes romantic, not out to kill humans.
The movie says the anti-venom for all the foreign snakes in the movie could only be gotten from other countries.
Not true, Cole says. ``It would be available from any zoo that keeps those species. And there is a venom bank in Miami, Venom One, that keeps anti-venom for everything from all over the world."
• Would each species need a different anti-venom, as the movie claims?
Yes, Cole says, ``If they're exotics, there's not a lot of overlap."
• The movie always calls snakes poisonous? Are most snakes poisonous?
No (thank goodness, on two counts). Most snakes are not harmful, and actually beneficial to the human environment. And technically, no snake is poisonous, they are venomous.
``Poisonous is something you eat,'' Cole says. ``Venomous is something injected. Snakes are venomous.''
The good news, Cole says: no snake behaves the way the Snakes on a Plane snakes do, and only a few really coil and strike.
``Snakes will only attack if they're cornered. None of these snakes was cornered. They were going after people. In real like, they're trying to get away.''
A few snakes, he says, such as the rattlesnake or water moccasin, will not always retreat, confident in their ability to defend themselves, but they still attack humans only when the human gets into their space and they feel threatened.
But what about all those stories we've heard to the contrary?
``One thing is true of all urban legends,'' Cole says, ``They stories always happened to a friend of a friend, never to you.''
Link
