Snakes in Old Time Radio

Our distant ancestors learned to grasp tree branches with their opposable thumbs and climb to escape predators and find food. Their descendants returned to the ground and learned to walk upright. This more vertical posture brought many new advantages, with the eyes higher they could see further, their digestive tract became more efficient because gravity was now aiding the flow of nutrients through it, the loping stride of bipedal locomotion was more efficient over longer distances, and the arms with their marvelous opposable thumbs became more nimble and dexterous.

The mysterious and seemingly random forces of evolution which brought human ancestors out of the trees and eventually into civilizations took the ancestors of snakes in a very different direction. The ancestors of snakes were four-legged, burrowing reptiles. As they adapted to a life of hunting in tunnels, their descendants lost first their forelimbs and eventually the hind legs. Some families of snake still retain a vestigial pelvis and the anal spurs on boas and pythons are vestigial legs (used in mating). Because of the underground environment they evolved to hunt in, snakes developed a transparent eyelid and their external ears were worn away.

All snakes are carnivorous and swallow their prey whole often using a distended jaw which allows them to swallow item up to three times the size of their own head. The most common methods of immobilizing said prey are by constriction or injecting venom into the victim through hollow fangs. Some venomous snakes can inject more than enough deadly poison to nearly instantly kill a full-grown man. No poisonous snake is known to actively hunt man, but they will strike if they feel trapped or threatened.

Despite their fearsome reputations, snakes actually hunt very little. Because they are ectothermic (gathering bodily heat from the environment rather than generating it through metabolic processes) snakes have relatively small nutritional needs, some pythons can go a full year between feedings. This also means that snakes have little energy beyond what is needed for respiration, locomotion, hunting, and reproduction to dedicate to developing brain-power. They have thrived for hundreds of millions of years without it.

Man's instinctive fear of snakes has led to many cults revering them as near gods. Escape tells the story of "The Snake Doctor", a frightening old man who lives in the hills in close contact with venomous cottonmouths. Adventures by Morse gives us "The Cobra King Strikes Back", and on Space Patrol, we hear about "The Serpent of Saturn". On Indian Trails, we hear a description of the "Hopi Snake Dance", a frightening ceremony involving real rattlesnakes.

In the Old West, snakes are seen less as gods than acts of God. They seem to strike randomly and do not care if their victim is wearing a black or a white hat. It does not hurt that the distinctive buzz of a rattlesnake is easy for the sound-effects man to make. Killing snakes is both a literal and figurative calling for Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke. The hero saves a helpless lady from a rattlesnake only to find out she is trying to kill him on The Roy Rogers Show. Little Beaver get bitten by a buzzworm just as Red Ryder is trying to prevent a range war between cattlemen and sheepherders on The Adventures of Red Ryder.

Probably the most dangerous thing about snakes is our fear of them and the panic it can create. There is panic in a small Oklahoma town because a python has escaped the circus, but all the serpents are accounted for on The Clyde Beatty Show. Tonto and the Lone Ranger use some rattlers to frighten a gang of stagecoach robbers into surrendering. The Jean Shepherd Show talks about a man who frees the snakes from 46 zoo cages. In their Riding High program, the Cycle Trades of America give bicycle riders the probably unnecessary advice of "Avoid poisonous snakes".

Fear of snakes becomes a little less unreasonable when they are used as instruments of murder. In "The Creeping Wall", a young woman feels understandably threatened when her husband buys a mansion filled with snakes. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons finds a man who is killed by a snake on an ocean liner in "The King Cobra Murder Case. In the "Murder is a Merry-Go-Round Matter", Yours Truly Johnny Dollar finds a series of murders at the circus all involving snakes, and on the Molle Mystery Theatre, a young wife intends to do in her husband by taking advantage of his fear of snakes.