Many species are threatened or endangered in Europe and North America due to a combination of habitat destruction and the ignorant and gruesome practice of snake “roundups,” during which people kill as many snakes as they can. I remember an elementary school classmate of mine, eyes wide with pride, talking about her father’s semiannual snake hunt. He would patrol the perimeter of their suburban home and decapitate any snake he encountered. He would then line up the heads to show his kids before discarding the severed body parts in the trash bin.
My classmate’s pride stemmed from the fact that she, like her father, believed he was protecting their family. People attempt to justify this slaughter on the basis that snakes are dangerous creatures, which is mostly false. Most species in North America are not venomous at all, posing next to no risk to people. Even the potentially lethal timber rattlesnake—given its species name, “horridus,” by early taxonomist Carl Linnaeus in 1758—has killed only a dozen people in the last thirty years across the entire United States. They are not known to be especially aggressive; they’re rather shy, in fact. If they can’t flee, they will usually attempt to warn clumsy humans before opting for their last resort. For this reason, it’s unsurprising that half the reported bites were not hapless encounters. The victims were allegedly handling the snakes—often depicted as agents of the devil in Western Christian stories and imagery—as part of religious services.
