Question: Are all snakes scary? (To some extent)

Adam Hargreaves answered on 15 Jun 2017:

Hi AmeliaMegan,
To be honest I don’t find most of them scary! Snakes are always portrayed as being the bad guy (e.g. the devil in the bible, Kaa in the jungle book, Nagini in Harry Potter etc.) so I think that affects how people view them. As a contrast, Lions are generally shown in a positive light, but I’d be much more afraid of being face to face with one!
Snakes are actually a lot more scared of us (and, in general, everything that isn’t food) and spend most of their time hiding. Lots of snake species, if confronted by humans or bigger animals will normally at first give a threat display. These are things like a cobra spreading its hood on its head to look bigger, a rattlesnake will start rattling, a puff adder will start hissing loudly and inflating its body to look bigger. This is to try and dissuade predators so they will leave them alone. In the wild snakes have a lot of predators, and snakes themselves have no arms or legs and are quite small compared to a lot of other animals, so it’s understandable that they’re probably terrified of everything! Bites to humans mostly happen for 2 reasons, the first is the snake is startled (for example if it’s stepped on accidentally), and the second is if humans start messing around with them and don’t leave them alone.
The ones I do find scary are Puff adders, they can be very aggressive, have an exceptionally fast strike (the movement they make to bite something) and their venom can do some very nasty things. Having said that, this is only when I have to handle them, so I’m physically close to them and intentionally disturbing them. If I’m just looking at them they’re beautiful snakes!