{"id":2353,"date":"2016-10-31T15:36:38","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T22:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=2353"},"modified":"2016-10-31T15:36:38","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T22:36:38","slug":"judging-a-book-by-its-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=2353","title":{"rendered":"Judging a Book by Its Covers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I spend altogether too much time on You Tube and when I ran across a channel called The Texas Snake Hunter, naturally I thought the worst. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I discovered it&#8217;s exactly the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=L8EyGbxMVqc\">opposite sort of channel I feared it was.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The truth about rattlesnakes is exactly as the linked video shows: they are by nature shy and unaggressive to humans. They <em>are<\/em> deadly hunters of rodents, but what is the point of a rattlesnake biting a human? That venom is metabolically very expensive to purchase, and a human (even if it dies from the bite, and odds are it won&#8217;t, most snake bites are not fatal) is <em>way<\/em> too large for even the largest rattler to swallow.<\/p>\n<p>Biting and envenomating only makes sense for a snake (a) if the creature being bitten is small enough to be swallowed after it dies, or (b) as a last resort defense measure. As to (b) the snake is <em>much<\/em> better off if it can slither away and escape without biting; it keeps its precious venom and can use it to invest in a nutritious meal to further its growth.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why rattlesnakes evolved rattles in the first place: to warn away large animals that might trample them <em>before<\/em> a situation degrades to the point where a bite in self-defense becomes necessary for survival.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been in rattlesnake country many times, and doubtless passed within feet of them dozens of times without my even noticing them. I&#8217;ve only actually <em>seen<\/em> a wild rattlesnake twice. Both times the snake was completely unaggressive and just wanted to be left alone.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally I obliged, and thus was in no danger. The two most common causes of snake bite are:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Person being bitten doesn&#8217;t even notice the snake and steps on it.<\/li>\n<li>Person being bitten wants the snake to act stereotypically (coiling up, preparing to strike), starts teasing it to that end, and ends up getting more than he bargained for.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spend altogether too much time on You Tube and when I ran across a channel called The Texas Snake Hunter, naturally I thought the worst. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I discovered it&#8217;s exactly the opposite sort of channel I feared it was. The truth about rattlesnakes is exactly as the linked video shows: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}