Reptile Apartment.com 2/7/14
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Saturday, February 7, 2015
The Grammys are this Sunday and one of my favorite artists, St. Vincent,
is nominated for Best Alternative Music Album. The first track on her
album is entitled "Rattlesnake" (which is awesome), but its lyrics may
not represent snakes in a good way. This song is about the fear and
intensity of being isolated in the wilderness for the first time. She
wrote the song after an experience in the American Southwest where she
wandered alone through the desert one night and thought she heard a
rattlesnake’s rattle. Based on the song’s lyrics and music composition,
this was a frightening experience for her. Would this song have a
different title if rattlesnakes were not feared by people?
Here are the lyrics to the song Rattlesnake by St. Vincent:
Follow the power lines back from the road
No one around so I take off my clothes
Am I the only one in the only world?
I see the snake holes dotted in the sand
As if the Seurat painted the Rio Grande
Am I the only the one in the only world?
Sweating, sweating no one is behind me
Sweating, sweating no one will ever find me
The only sound out here is my own breath
And my feet stuttering to make a path
Am I the only one in the only world?
Is that the wind finally picking up?
Is that a rattle sounding from the brush?
I'm not the only one in the only world
Running, running, running rattle behind me
Running, running, no one will ever find me
Running, running, running rattle behind me
Running, running, no one will ever find me
Sweating, sweating, sweating, rattle behind me
Running, running, no one will ever find me
Sweating, sweating, sweating, rattle behind me
Running, running, no one will ever find me
A
broad theme of the song centers on a fear of snakes. Is this fear
justified? Long long ago, snakes were in fact a predator of early man
(and still prey on some hunter-gatherers today!)
and so we hold an evolutionary reason for why we would be afraid of
snakes. In the song, she becomes frightened after hearing the rattling
sound of a rattlesnake. A lot of studies have focused on fear responses
related to seeing to snake, but not hearing the sound of a snake. Is our
response to hearing a snake different from when we see one?
Past
studies have shown that humans possess the keen ability to quickly
detect hidden snakes, and this has led to the Snake Detection Theory
which states that our strong need to detect snakes in the past has led
to human’s crazy snake-finding skills which are no longer necessary for
our current survival (Soares and Esteves 2014; Van Strien et al. 2014).
However, our ability to find snakes quickly does not explain the
psychological fear many people have towards snakes (Tierney and Connolly
2013). Some scientists believe that the fear of snakes is transmitted
from mother (or father) to the child – it is a learned response.
In support of this, both human and primate infants show greater fear of
snake-like objects only after observing fearful reactions to the objects
by their mothers (Mineka et al. 1984, Gerull and Rapee 2002).
As
past studies have shown, the fear that occurs after seeing a snake is
likely culturally learned (unjustified), but the fear that occurs after
hearing rattling may be justified. Little to no studies have been done
on human responses to rattlesnake rattling, but research on other
animals suggests that hearing a snake can indeed be startling, but
differs from seeing a snake.
As
an example (and plug for my own study system), ground squirrels respond
fearfully to rattlesnake rattling. They can even discriminate between
more and less dangerous rattlesnakes just based on sound. Larger more
dangerous snakes produce rattling with higher amplitudes and lower
frequencies – louder and lower in pitch – than smaller snakes. In
addition, warmer more dangerous rattlesnakes produce louder rattling
with faster click rates than colder less dangerous rattlesnakes (Rowe
and Owings 1996). In one study, squirrels tail flagged and stood alert
more following playbacks of recorded rattling sounds from more dangerous
snakes (Swaisgood et al. 2003).
Dan Blumstein, researcher at UCLA, has been studying what he calls – The Sound of Fear
(dun dun duuuun). He’s looked into the acoustic qualities of sounds
associated with fear from the alarm calls and screams of mammals to the
soundtracks of Hollywood films (like the music during the classic shower
scene in Psycho). His team has found that sounds that make us
aroused/jumpy/uneasy contain more noise than neutral sounds. What does
that mean exactly? Well, noise doesn’t sound nice because it contains
non-linearities, or sound wave distortions. Noise is more complex and
more atonal than sounds we consider soothing. We may find noise so
disturbing because its acoustic characteristics are more variable and
somewhat unpredictable, making us less likely to habituate to them
(Blesdoe and Blumstein 2014). Marmots (Blumstein and Récapet 2009), Great-tailed Grackles, (Slaughter et al. 2013), and White-crowned Sparrows (Blesdoe and Blumstein 2014) respond “fearfully” to noise.
The rattle is currently used by rattlesnakes for defense – warning potential predators of the snake’s dangerousness (see previous blog post).
It makes sense that the sound of rattling be associated with fear to
deter other animals from harming the threatened rattlesnake. Indeed, the
rattling of a rattlesnake is noisy and atonal like screams and alarm
calls. Its distinct acoustic qualities may justly explain our fear after
hearing but not seeing a rattlesnake. The Rattlesnake song itself is
jarring because of its use of dissonant and atonal sounds. In the end,
we see that St. Vincent was likely expressing a true emotional response
to a scary sound, which is also a conserved evolutionary response across
distantly related species.
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References:
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Introduction
I
am an Ecology Ph.D. student at San Diego State University and UC Davis.
I study predator-prey interactions between rattlesnakes and ground
squirrels. Many people are afraid of snakes, and the goal of my blog is
to reduce this fear by demonstrating snakes’ intrinsic value in nature.
Snakes not only interact with their prey by eating them, but they also
affect their prey in non-lethal, but important ways. Ground squirrels in
particular have responded strongly to snake predation by evolving
unique defensive behaviors and physiologies. My research examines these
unique antisnake defenses and this blog will highlight some of them. I
also like to post videos of rarely observed snake behaviors. Please
enjoy this informative storyline of a very exceptional study system.
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