You decide to head to your local patch of greenery — by the creek, lake or foreshore — with the sun on your face, the breeze in your hair and your dog’s tongue blissfully lolling.
Suddenly you see it. Paused on the path just a few metres in front of your feet, soaking up those same springtime rays — a snake.
Love them or loathe them, snakes have been co-existing with, and haunting us, since well before our ancestors called themselves ‘human’.
Today, to encounter a snake is to brush up against the wild and mysterious heart of the natural world. Snakes are important members of every terrestrial ecosystem across Australia.
But what exactly influences human-snake interactions?
In southern Australia, a flurry of animal activity occurs in spring.
As resources start becoming plentiful after the relatively lean months of winter, spring is the reproductive season for many plants and animals.
Southern springs are the right temperature for snakes to bask during the times of day we humans are also out and about.
In summer, snakes — including venomous species such as tiger snakes and brown snakes — are typically more active very early in the morning, late in the evening or during the night when temperatures are not too high for them.
After a slow winter, snakes are both hungry (they may have been fasting for months) and on the lookout for eligible members of the opposite sex.
Basking, hunting and searching for a mate brings snakes out into the open in spring a bit more than at other times of year, so we’re most likely to encounter them during this time.
Snakes indicate ecosystem health
In some terrestrial Australian ecosystems, snakes are near the top of the food chain.
After reaching a certain size, they have few predators of their own. A two-metre coastal taipan in the cane fields of northern Queensland, for example, has more to fear from harvesters than it does from any natural predator.
Snakes often have specific habitat requirements.
In general, they need shelter and protection from bigger predators, which might include birds of prey, predatory mammals such as native marsupials or introduced cats and foxes, or other snakes.
They also need opportunities for safely regulating their body temperature.
Snakes don’t want to bite you
Snakes are awesome predators, but no Australian snake is interested in eating a human.
Why? Because snakes are actually quite vulnerable animals.
Compared to many other species, they are small, have no sharp claws or strong limbs, and limited energy to put up a fight — they are basically limbless lizards with different teeth.
For those that possess it, venom is a last resort and only a minority of species — such as taipans, brown snakes, tiger snakes and death adders — can deliver a life-threatening bite to a person.
But snakes would much rather use their venom to subdue prey (that’s what they have it for) than to defend themselves.
When snakes bite humans in Australia, it’s a defensive reaction to a large animal they view as a potential predator.
If you’re lucky enough to see a wild snake, and if you respect its boundaries and give it personal space, it’s sure to do the same for you.
Keep dogs on the lead in snake areas and educate your kids to be snake-smart from as young as possible.
Even though snakes don’t want to bite, snakebite envenoming can be a life-threatening emergency.
Learn first aid, and when you go for a walk in one of those sanctuaries of greenery that snakes like as much as we do, carry a compression bandage (or three).
It’s almost certain you will never need it, but it could just save a life.
By Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University Dr Chris Jolly, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Australian Venom Research Unit at The University of Melbourne Dr Timothy Jackson and PhD candidate at Curtin University Damian Lettoof
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