Snakes ARE affectionate

[SoPhilly]

"What I’d really like to see is a study monitoring the brain activity of rattlesnakes carrying out maternal care tasks and comparing it to brain activity during activities such as “kissing” when interacting with handlers. Would the same regions of the brain light up? How would the results then compare to acts of affection in birds or mammals? But the biggest question is; who would pay for such research?"

Yo, I absolutely would, let's get a kickstarter going .

Honestly, I think a bigger question is how you would get a rattlesnake to engage in maternal care tasks while in a functional MRI scan. You'd then have to get in there with it and let it kiss you, no fair using some other species of snake.

I all seriousness, good on you for researching, and if you stumble across anything free you can link to for those of us outside the ivory tower, please do! I was actually trying to read about the limbic system of reptiles earlier today because of this thread.

Excerpts and price tags. Boo.

[SSSSnakes]

Half the people in the world don't know how they feel or if they love something. They have to go to a psychiatrist to try and understand what they feel. How are we to really expect to learn what a snake is feeling.

Can a snake love something? It's like the age old question. How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? The world may never know. LOL

[eminart]

Originally Posted by MesoCorney

No eminart you are right we are done. I don't like repeating myself and you have hit my limit.

Repeating what you've already said wouldn't answer my question, which is why I've asked it three times in this thread. So, yes, I think we're done, since nobody has an answer for what would drive a snake to evolve the emotions of love and affection.

[RAD House]

Read prairie pandas findings. If you still don't see an answer I can not help you.

[RAD House]

Peer reviewed paper about snakes being capable of love.

Here's What Happened When a Florida Man Tried to Kiss a Cottonmouth Snake

[MDT]

Originally Posted by MesoCorney

Peer reviewed paper about snakes being capable of love.

Here's What Happened When a Florida Man Tried to Kiss a Cottonmouth Snake

you're kiddin', right?

[MDT]

Originally Posted by ssssnakes

it's like the age old question. How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? The world may never know. Lol

142.........

[FWK]

This is the best thread this forum has produced in some time. I have re-read it several times and appreciate all of the opinions and points of view offered. Y'all made me rethink my own position on the matters discussed here. I've refrained from posting as it has developed because every time I thought I had something to say, eminart said it for me. Bravo.

sophiedufort, I will address you directly now because I believe to patronize someone is about the biggest insult I can pay another adult, and I respect the way you've handled yourself here enough to be blunt with you. I believe you are wrong, and, frankly, a bit nuts. That is my opinion, take it for whatever it is worth to you. What you do in the privacy of your own home is your business, but that you honestly believe your snakes like to be kissed on the head amazes to me. It flies in the face of everything I know to be true about snakes. Even if snakes are capable of some form of primitive emotion I simply can not fathom a snake enjoying a human kissing them on the head. This type of statement can only further the public's perception that people who keep snakes are freaks, and I adamantly maintain that I do not keep snakes because I'm a freak. I keep them because I am utterly fascinated by them. I keep them because I love animals, I love nature, I love learning about them, and studying them in both natural and captive settings. I want to know as much about them and their role in the natural world as possible. I am a skeptic, I want truth, facts, knowledge. This is where you and I are so fundamentally different. We perceive the world in very different ways. You like kissing your snakes, you get something out of it. The snake does not. It only puts up with it. The snake has learned (this is where verbiage gets a little sticky, I'll explain myself in a moment) that you are not a threat and touching its head does not trigger a fight or flight response. Now just how much the snake can actually "learn" I don't know. I use the word "learn" because I don't have a better term in my vocabulary. To say it learns implies this is knowledge it can actively employ and I don't know if this is the case, or if it is simply a conditioned response. For the most part I believe it to be a conditioned response, but I agree there is much we do not know about the reptilian brain. What I do know is that the snake does not like being kissed on the head. I think you are badly misreading your snakes behavior in many ways. Look, I admire your love for your animals and respect your opinions, but I do worry about some of your habits. Whether you like it or not, handling the snakes for long periods of time is stressful for the animals. If you really do want what is best for your snakes I implore you to take a hard look at how often and long you have them out.

Originally Posted by mistersprinkles

The reptilian brain is a very simple computer. I don't believe, at all, that it is capable of "higher emotions". I've had snakes since I was 5. I'm in my early 30s now. I have had very docile snakes but I never once felt like my snake was loving, self aware, or even capable of moderately complex thought, for that matter.

Snakes have "modes", as Steve Irwin used to say. Resting mode, mating mode, hunting mode, eating mode, exploring mode. That's it. It's like a Commodore 64 with scales.

There are quite a few statements in this thread that rang true to me, but this is a gem.

Originally Posted by Aaron_S

This thread took a turn to "light hearted" banter.

Discussing which comic book character is the most promiscuous didn't seem relevant to the subject matter at hand, or even anything to do with this forum. It looked like a rather blatant and juvenile attempt to derail an otherwise interesting thread.

[prairiepanda]

Originally Posted by SSSSnakes

Can a snake love something? It's like the age old question. How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? The world may never know. LOL

That question is easy to answer, if you've got $100 kicking around and are really curious. Challenge a high school robotics club develop a licking simulation machine for "a chance to win" $50. Then spend the other $50 on tootsie pops and have the machine lick all of them to the core, counting each lick(this is a feature that can be programmed into the robot so it wouldn't even need to be monitored closely). Get yourself a free trial of JMP or learn the language of R to analyze your data, and you have your answer

Tootsie pops aside, you're right that we might not ever know for certain whether snakes can love. It might be impossible to test directly(although the Ledoux paper I found has some suggested directions of research that could be a starting point). But we can do as we do with many of the mysteries of nature and formulate theories with high potential of being true based on collected evidence. After all, gravitational radiation has never been observed directly but we deduce that it must exist based on the effects we observe on mass. It could turn out that the theory is entirely wrong, but the likelihood of it being correct is reasonably high because it fits our observations and the model makes accurate predictions. I would never seek to "prove" anything in science, but we can all search for compelling evidence of what is true.

[Nuxodom]

Originally Posted by FWK

What I do know is that the snake does not like being kissed on the head. I think you are badly misreading your snakes behavior in many ways.

I'm dying to read how you unquestionably *know* this. Please elaborate.

[MDT]

Originally Posted by Nuxodom

I'm dying to read how you unquestionably *know* this. Please elaborate.

What possible evolutionary advantage could a snake derive from getting kissed on its head? In higher mammals (you know, hairless apes), kissing via PET scanning, EEG, etc.,(read: measurable scientific means) to cause changes in brain activity in the pleasure centers of the brain. Dopamine, oxytocin, and other neurochemicals can be measured to increase with human touching, kissing, love/lust...MRI/PET activity shows increases (and decreases in some portions) of neural activity/blood flow. Sooooo......yeah......

Now, there may be studies out there that address similar studies in reptiles....however, I would venture that no one has wanted to spend the $$$ on this. If you can find those studies, please reference them.

Back to evolutionary advantages......in humans, those activities reinforce attraction, coupling and ultimately procreation/propagation of the species. No such activity is seen in lower vertebrates (of which, snakes are)....and you could cite the fact that most vertebrates will court a mate (def not the same tho), however, at no time in the history of life on this planet has a snake ever kissed another snake, so I can confidently say that snakes have zero idea what a kiss is, what it's for, how it work, whatever. All they see is a big hairy predator with forward facing eyes lowering its head close to theirs and for all they know, they are hoping that big hairy vertebrate isn't coming in to bite their head off.

This is how I know they don't like kissing.

[lady_bug87]

Originally Posted by FWK

This is the best thread this forum has produced in some time. I have re-read it several times and appreciate all of the opinions and points of view offered. Y'all made me rethink my own position on the matters discussed here. I've refrained from posting as it has developed because every time I thought I had something to say, eminart said it for me. Bravo.

sophiedufort, I will address you directly now because I believe to patronize someone is about the biggest insult I can pay another adult, and I respect the way you've handled yourself here enough to be blunt with you. I believe you are wrong, and, frankly, a bit nuts. That is my opinion, take it for whatever it is worth to you. What you do in the privacy of your own home is your business, but that you honestly believe your snakes like to be kissed on the head amazes to me. It flies in the face of everything I know to be true about snakes. Even if snakes are capable of some form of primitive emotion I simply can not fathom a snake enjoying a human kissing them on the head. This type of statement can only further the public's perception that people who keep snakes are freaks, and I adamantly maintain that I do not keep snakes because I'm a freak. I keep them because I am utterly fascinated by them. I keep them because I love animals, I love nature, I love learning about them, and studying them in both natural and captive settings. I want to know as much about them and their role in the natural world as possible. I am a skeptic, I want truth, facts, knowledge. This is where you and I are so fundamentally different. We perceive the world in very different ways. You like kissing your snakes, you get something out of it. The snake does not. It only puts up with it. The snake has learned (this is where verbiage gets a little sticky, I'll explain myself in a moment) that you are not a threat and touching its head does not trigger a fight or flight response. Now just how much the snake can actually "learn" I don't know. I use the word "learn" because I don't have a better term in my vocabulary. To say it learns implies this is knowledge it can actively employ and I don't know if this is the case, or if it is simply a conditioned response. For the most part I believe it to be a conditioned response, but I agree there is much we do not know about the reptilian brain. What I do know is that the snake does not like being kissed on the head. I think you are badly misreading your snakes behavior in many ways. Look, I admire your love for your animals and respect your opinions, but I do worry about some of your habits. Whether you like it or not, handling the snakes for long periods of time is stressful for the animals. If you really do want what is best for your snakes I implore you to take a hard look at how often and long you have them out.



There are quite a few statements in this thread that rang true to me, but this is a gem.



Discussing which comic book character is the most promiscuous didn't seem relevant to the subject matter at hand, or even anything to do with this forum. It looked like a rather blatant and juvenile attempt to derail an otherwise interesting thread.

When threads get derailed like this its because people have chosen to momentarily break tension. it gives the topic some cool-down time. That's what you need sometimes when you're beating a dead horse. A break.

[Derek Roddy]

Originally Posted by MesoCorney

Ok Derek I charge you to find just one that mentions snake love or even emotions. That should keep you from making ridiculous over generalized posts for a bit. I have to pick up dog poop.

There are not any papers mentioning or proving that there is "love" in snakes but, there are hundreds of papers that show why snakes don't "love".

In fact, any paper ever written on the subject tells us their capability and what and how we understand them....If YOU understand what you're reading.

You can start with book called "reptile biology".

It will explain everything you need to know about their makeup, brains and evolutionary existence.

Cheers,
D

[prairiepanda]

Originally Posted by Derek Roddy

In fact, any paper ever written on the subject tells us their capability and what and how we understand them....If YOU understand what you're reading.

All the papers I found on the subject have been very careful to state the limitations of research in this area and concede the fact that we cannot know these things for sure. I've noticed the same among the textbooks I have around from both me and my roommate(my major is biochemistry and hers is psychology). I have, however, seen other books before(in elementary school) which make "definitive" claims about reptile intelligence and emotional capacity, but back then I wasn't interested in checking author reputability so I can't say much about those. And I guess I haven't read "every paper ever written", but the papers I found do fall under that category. If you've misunderstood something, I can pull up excerpts from the papers to clear things up.

If this 'Reptile Biology' book you've recommended has solid evidence of your claims, I'd be very interested in checking it out. I'll need to know the author(s) and edition number in order to find the one you're talking about. Please share.

I'm not trying to debunk your opinion; there's plenty of evidence to back it up. However, these blanket statements about science in general and your overall attitude towards the concepts of proof and evidence are not helping your case. Make what conclusions you like based on the evidence we have, but please accept the limitations of current research. Just telling people "you're wrong because SCIENCE" is not a constructive argument. You want to aim for something more like "I'm more likely right because evidence A,B,C" and/or "You're probably wrong because evidence D,E,F"

[Derek Roddy]

Originally Posted by prairiepanda

If this 'Reptile Biology' book you've recommended has solid evidence of your claims, I'd be very interested in checking it out. I'll need to know the author(s) and edition number in order to find the one you're talking about. Please share.

Any reptile biology book tells us what snakes brains are capable of. It's no secret how the reptile brain works and what those parts that make up the brain are capable of based on the evolution of all other animals on this planet.

ALL higher level thinking/reasoning, etc animals on this planet all have the same brain parts. Snakes DO NOT have these parts that have allowed evolution of higher thinking in other species. If reptiles would have evolved with those evolutionary traits...then this conversation may have merit. BUT, It doesn't or hasn't nor will it.

It's not rocket science people.

D