Today is Groundhog Day, and this has gotten me to thinking about myths that are associated with animals. Whether or not you consider a groundhog’s actions an accurate forecast of spring or a myth known primarily as the setting for a very good Bill Murray movie, people do sometimes attribute animals with weird powers and abilities. This hairy little weather forecaster aside, reptiles, too, have been the subject of some pretty odd thinking along these lines.
It comes as no surprise, of course, that the snake is the reptile most commonly bestowed with mythic abilities. One that is fairly well known is the myth that snakes have hypnotic abilities. A snake’s capacity to hypnotize its prey has been portrayed in books and movies for many years, perhaps most memorably through Kaa, a python in Disney’s animated version of The Jungle Book (1967) that uses hypnosis to subdue his victims.
A snake's unblinking eyes provide a hypnotic effect.
There are two factors that likely contribute to the belief that snakes can hypnotize their prey, and neither has anything to do with a watch being swung back and forth. First is a snake’s lack of eyelids. The resulting unblinking stare gives snakes a bit of a hypnotic aura right off the bat. Second is the tendency of living prey animals to freeze up, possibly in fear, when in close proximity to a snake. Some may run, but not all. Animals that sense danger will often remain motionless, in the hope (assuming animals can hope) that the predator that is approaching or confronting them will not see them if they are not moving. To them, stillness equals invisibility. Combine these two factors — an unblinking snake staring at an animal that is not moving – and the tableaux seems to illustrate hypnotism at work.
Go to http://bit.ly/aGLvlV to read the rest of this blog.
Random Neural Firings of a REPTILES Editor: The Satellite Blog 