Decapitated but still dangerous: How a dead snake can still bite

July 23, 2024 7:13 PM

Decapitated but still dangerous: How a dead snake can still cause a lethal bite. A snake doesn't have to be alive to bite and kill you. So how can this be, and how long can they remain dangerous after they've wriggled off this mortal coil?
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (20 comments total)

I'm not afraid of snakes (at least not if they're not pissed off) but this gives one pause.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:41 PM on July 23 [1 favorite]

Ever been stung by a dead bee?
posted by sammyo at 7:48 PM on July 23

deadly, deadly
posted by HearHere at 7:49 PM on July 23

This is the first time I’ve seen information how long a dead snake can bite, fascinating.
posted by lepus at 7:49 PM on July 23 [1 favorite]

I lived in a small town in SW Kansas when I was young. One day, likely in the early '70s, a story went around town about how a local man had killed a rattlesnake and cut off its head. He later reached into his pocket to show someone the snake's head, and it bit him. It's nice to have that story verified.
posted by bryon at 8:22 PM on July 23 [3 favorites]

WARNING: STORY IS NOT VEGETARIAN. When I was a wee baby hippie, my stepdad killed a rattlesnake under the house. (In retrospect, this was probably bad, but it was the 80s.) He threw the head off into the bushes with a shovel (country people know about this sort of thing) and my mom prepped the rest of the snake and put it in a bowl in the fridge to marinate because we were trashy hippies, not fancy ones, and we were going to eat it. We then went to a party.

When we came back, the snake (headless, skinless, with no organs, and dead at least 8 hours by that point) had crawled most of the way out of the bowl.

I would not kill a rattlesnake under normal circumstances now, but I was taught to not just not touch the head, but to push it into a hole with a stick or something and pile rocks on top.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 8:29 PM on July 23 [16 favorites]

Hmmm, always thought that it was folklore. Guess them folks knew more than I thought!

Nibbly Fang, epony-seriously!
posted by BlueHorse at 9:33 PM on July 23 [2 favorites]

Anyone else read this and subconsciously put their feet off the floor and on the coffee table?
posted by Keith Talent at 10:18 PM on July 23 [4 favorites]

Nibbly Fang that's an amazing story. Crept out of the bowl!
posted by Zumbador at 10:50 PM on July 23

Nibbly Fang, that is incredible.

Great thread! I am deadly terrified of snakes (the one time I came across one in the wild I was frozen into immobility by my sheer terror) but also have a healthy respect for them, such fascinating animals.
posted by unicorn chaser at 1:54 AM on July 24 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine lost a fingertip this way. I guess he's lucky that's all he lost.
posted by abraxasaxarba at 2:03 AM on July 24 [1 favorite]

We humans have known that snakes appear to "live on" after death for centuries.

Now that’s a seriously delayed bite reflex!

(It took me a few passes to get what the author meant.)
posted by martin q blank at 2:50 AM on July 24 [4 favorites]

Animal decapitation previously on MeFi.
posted by TedW at 4:28 AM on July 24

When we came back, the snake (headless, skinless, with no organs, and dead at least 8 hours by that point) had crawled most of the way out of the bowl.

brb off to hire several therapists
posted by lalochezia at 4:37 AM on July 24 [8 favorites]

Advice for handling dead snakes

Put simply: don't, if you can help it.

Noted.
posted by kozad at 6:33 AM on July 24 [2 favorites]

...had crawled most of the way out of the bowl.

I'm betting this has to do with the marinade; there's something called "dancing sashimi" where sodium-heavy soy sauce is poured on raw fish muscles, which react to the sodium and twitch, so it's likely that the salt in the marinade triggered the snake muscles to move until it hopped out. Do not google dancing sashimi if you're not ready to see dead things moving around.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:51 AM on July 24 [9 favorites]

Was coming in to say exactly what AzraelBrown said, but I wholeheartedly encourage you to Google the dancing sashimi, because that's just the sort of creepy shit that keeps me going.
posted by briank at 7:27 AM on July 24 [3 favorites]

God, I wish my dad were still around so I could apologize to him. When I was a kid, he killed a snake in our yard--this was such a thing in my family, even these days my mom puts out sulfur to keep the snakes away, like drawing some kind of charmed circle to keep out the demons--and I really wanted to get up close and look at it, and he was like, no, you can't, snakes don't really die until night-time. As a little kid that seemed fascinating, and as I got older it just seemed like one of those dumb things my family believed (like the aforementioned sulfur) and I got very eye-rolly about it. And yet--sure enough! Snakes keep moving a long time after death. So, sorry dad! But also you shouldn't have killed that snake!
posted by mittens at 7:37 AM on July 24 [7 favorites]

I don't really take issue with snakes, indeed, I've found them in my house and just been kinda "meh" about it. Ain't like they really want to be there, so let 'em leave, I say. However, this creeps me the fuck out. I would have assumed that you could still get poisoned, but the decapitated head actually biting after more than a minute or two is incredibly disturbing.
posted by wierdo at 9:09 PM on July 24 [1 favorite]

From wikipedia on the preperation of snakes in bottles of alcohol

the snake may be put on ice until it passes out, at which point it is gutted, bled and sewn up. When the viper is thawed and awakens, it will quickly die in an aggressive striking manner,

posted by Mitheral at 9:59 AM on July 28