Snakes 'N Rats Tails

[Vincent]

Can anyone help me settle a dispute here - is there any truth in the fact that humans have a deep rooted fear of snakes not because they're poisonous.......but because they resemble rats tails?
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[DrDonnyBrago]

Wouldn't that require humans to have a fear of rat's tails?


I'm quite comfortable with snakes and I have about 50 rat tails in a freezer (DIY rat tail collagen)...

https://www.nature.com/nprot/journal/v1/n6/images/nprot.2006.430-F1.jpg

[Vincent]

[DrDonnyBrago]

[LordShaftesbu...]

How would a fear of plague-ridden rats develop when it wasn't known that rats carried the plague?

[GhostRider]

By that logic, shouldn't we also run around screaming at the sight of string?

No, I'd imagine the fear of snakes is due to the fact that they are quite intimidating in the looks department, move in a creepy fashion, and strike very fast. And cavemen would watch their fellow brethren scream, writh, convulse and forth at the mouth before ceasing to move on a permanent basis having been bitten by one. That seems a more plausible theory to me.

GhostRider
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[Whosthedaddy]

Didn't know snakes were poisonous? Venomous yes, poisonous no.
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[DrDonnyBrago]

[Rowey]

I think you have it the wrong way round.

I actually saw a snake wrangler tv show. There were all these Indian(?) looking people running about like loons because there was a snake spotted in a pile of husks. Snake man comes in, takes one look and says it's a rats tail. He pulls the dead rat out and then explains that's what the snakes are looking to eat, not to bite humans.

So it makes sense that people are scared of rats tails as they resemble snakes. Another possibility, although not so much in the UK, is that where there are rats/mice, there could be snakes that eat them.
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Never argue with an idiot. They'll only bring you down to their level, and beat you with experience.

[Walloper]

Awe FFS BCF, what kind of people are visiting this forum now-a-days?

The fear of snakes goes back to Genesis.
When Phil Collins fell out with Peter Gabriel. Someone called someone else, 'a low lyin' snake in the grass.' and flounced out the band.

That is where the inherently instinctive and morbid fear of serpents comes from.

If you google Snakes and Genesis it throws up the wiki page.
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[P.addy]

[Walloper]

[Vincent]

[Walloper]

[Vincent]

From what my Mum told me, she was bitten by an Adder while putting some rubbish in a litter bin at a campsite. She just thought that she'd caught her foot on some barbed wire or sommat. It was serious shit at the time as she was quite old and just collapsed within minutes.
I love some of the smaller snakes but if I was to set up a vivarium(?), I'd like to keep exotic frogs I used to have aquatic frogs in my last tropical fish tank and could watch them for ages.
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[Walloper]

[andyscooter]

got bitten by a grass snake one evening on the way home pissed up and walking through some long grass

trod on it and it turned and bit me


i was wearing sandels at the time so it caught my ankle
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[Walloper]