25: Capybara & Gaboon Viper
Ellen: Hey everybody, this is Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: And this is Just the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast where we take your favorite animal every week and we rate and review them out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics.
Christian: We are not zoological experts. Anything we say can and will be used against us in a court of law.
Ellen: We're not experts, but we do a lot of research to get ready for the show and we make sure that we're giving you information from super good and reliable sources.
Christian: Who's up first this week?
Ellen: Me. I am.
Christian: All right, so what do you got for us, Ellen?
Ellen: This is the capybara.
Christian: Yay!
Ellen: Capybara, scientific name Hydrochoerus hydrochaerus.
Christian: Woah.
Ellen: I know, it's one of those, it's a little bit repetitive in the species name. It has an "a," where in the genus name it has an "o." So this species has only been technically requested one time, and it was like a billion years ago, and it was by Morgan Maher. Thank you. Morgan.
Christian: Yes, thank you.
Ellen: I'm getting my information on this animal from the Jacksonville Zoo, the San Diego Zoo, National Geographic, and some other sources that I'll cite when they come up.
Christian: All right.
Ellen: So to introduce you to my friend, the capybara: This is the world's largest rodent and it's an absolute unit. This is a big boy. Their adult size is typically up to 2 feet, or 60 centimeters tall, and up to 140 pounds, or 64 kilograms.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah. They're dense little dudes, right? They're only two feet tall, but 140 pounds. That's like...
Christian: A small person.
Ellen: It is. It's about the, it's about the weight of a person. They're chunky little dudes. They're heavy for the size that they are.
Christian: But they still swim, right?
Ellen: They do swim. Don't worry, I'll get there. So yeah, this is the largest rodent on earth, and you can kind of see in their face that they kind of have that rodent sort of face. They have the face that a lot of people compare it to a beaver. It's very rectangular. When you see them inside profile, it's almost a perfect rectangle. That nose is like a very blunt sort of, straight down nose, so you can see it in the face. This is a mammal with wirey brown fur, they have small round ears on the very top of their head. You can find these big boys in Central and South America in riverbanks and marshes. So they're semi-aquatic. They spend most of their time chilling out in the water, but they do have to come out on land.
Christian: I am surprised to hear they're in central America. I guess I purely thought of them as being like Amazon rainforest type thing.
Ellen: You can find them in southern parts of Central America.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah. Basically in any sort of tropical rain forest area that has a lot of standing water.
Christian: Gotcha.
Ellen: They can kind of make themselves at home there. Their taxonomic family is called Cavidae. This is the cavy family. Do you know what a cavy is?
Christian: No.
Ellen: So a cavy is a type of rodent that includes guinea pigs, and other rodents known as cavies include maras. But the thing that we would be most familiar with from this family would be a guinea pig.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So you can kind of see that in their face and in their feet also. When you look at them, they have the same kind of feet that a Guinea pig have that has the four toes pointing forward in the front, and then three toes on the back.
Christian: What...?
Ellen: Yeah. If you've ever looked really close at it, Guinea pigs pause like their front feet have four toes. Their back feet have three toes.
Christian: Oh! Okay.
Ellen: What are you thinking of?
Christian: I misinterpreted what you said. I was imagining one foot, with four toes on the front and then three foot- three toes on the back.
Ellen: Oh, like they have seven toes.
Christian: I was like, "You're blowing my mind!"
Ellen: Seven toes per paw. You never noticed how guinea pigs have seven toes? That's absurd. Anyway, so I'm going to get into my ratings. So first category that we like to look at is effectiveness, and we define this as how good the animal is at doing the things that it's trying to do. I give the capybara an 8 out of 10. The capybara has some really interesting adaptations that make it really good at getting around in the water. So, first of all, like, I mentioned that the front feet have four toes, the back feet have three toes. But one difference between the capybara and the guinea pig is that they have webbed feet.
Christian: Oh, okay.
Ellen: So there's actually webbing in between their toes, and that helps them generate some movement in the water. Also, whereas when you look at a guinea pig's toes, they have those very, like almost needle-sharp claws, the capybara has claws, but they're much more round and blunt and thick.
Christian: Kinda like a dog's maybe?
Ellen: I mean, I wouldn't even say that, it's just- it's a much thicker, blunter claw and it seems like it's more for digging into the ground.
Christian: Got it.
Ellen: So it's more for pushing on like mud and pushing off on riverbanks and stuff. It's more for gaining traction on the bottom of the water.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So they need to navigate in the water really well cause that's where they spend most of their time and that's where they find most of the vegetation that they eat. So they eat a lot of grasses that grow in the water, you know...
Christian: Kind of like our manatee friends.
Ellen: Yeah. Well they, they eat things on the surface of the water. So they'll eat plants growing on the surface or plants growing along the riverbank or stuff like that.
Christian: Like maybe lily pad-type plants.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, they like to eat stuff like that.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: They can also hold their breath for up to five minutes at a time.
Christian: That's a lot.
Ellen: It is. They can really go for a lengthy dive. They can chill in the water for quite a while. It's a good long time. Now what's really interesting that I hadn't actively thought about, but once I heard it, it kind of affected the way that I now look at capybaras, is that their eyes, ears and nostrils are all located along the top of the head. Instead of the, like for example, the nostrils being lower on the head, they're up top.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So the reason for this is so that the capybara can still hear, see, and breathe with the rest of their body submerged in the water. So kind of like when you talked about the matamata, how they have that tube-shaped nose, so that they can still breathe without having anything visible above the water. This is kind of that same concept where they're minimizing the amount of their body that they have to have out of the water.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: So they can do all of this stuff while only having a very small amount of their head exposed out of the water.
Christian: The imagery you described also makes me think of hippos.
Ellen: Yup. Yup. Similar to that.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: They're not related to hippos, but...
Christian: No, but that same kind of principle, like having all of those sensory things on one plane.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. It is similar to hippos in that way. So all of those things contribute to it being pretty effective in the water, and so that's good because kind of their only defense strategy is to hide in the water. So if they see a predator or something, then the herd will run away as fast as they can, and they will try to run into the water so that they can hide there. Now, I did have to deduct two points from their effectiveness because they don't have any other means of defending themselves, and hiding in the water isn't going to do anything against, for example, caimans, anacondas, and jaguars.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: All three of those will not hesitate to just pick one of those capybara right out of the herd.
Christian: And plus, one of those is normally in the water anyway.
Ellen: Well, two of them, caimans and anacondas are usually in the water and jaguars, as we talked about in a recent episode, will not hesitate to just jump right in. So yeah, I kinda had to take an effectiveness point off because yeah, you can hide in the water all you want, but that's still where the predators are.
Christian: I think that also kind of speaks to how impressive the anaconda is to, you know, of course, snakes eat their food whole, and this is a big boy.
Ellen: While I was researching this, I did stumble across on the internet a video of an anaconda swallowing a capybara.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Which is ridiculous. That's absolutely insane. Please stop it. Stop it. I don't like it.
Christian: So, prior to this episode, the main thing I knew about capybaras is that... Food for anacondas. That was the thing.
Ellen: I don't think that anacondas are like their primary predator. I think it's jaguars, but it's also birds of prey that will pick them off, like eagles and stuff like that.
Christian: When they're young, maybe?
Ellen: You ever seen a harpy eagle?
Christian: Oh wait, is that the same area?
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: Is it?
Ellen: Yeah. They're in South America.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah. It's crazy. Right?
Christian: Yeah. Poor capybara.
Ellen: Yeah, he's not doing great. So, yeah, the capybara doesn't really have any other sort of defense strategies, although in order to sort of make up for their vulnerability, like other rodents, they are prolific breeders. So they can have a litter of up to eight babies at a time.
Christian: That's the quantity over quality type thing, I guess.
Ellen: Yeah. That's kind of the rodent approach, right? It's like they have kind of come to terms with like, okay, most of us are gonna die. Most of us are gonna get eaten very quickly, so let's just make very many of us.
Christian: That one's going to be the ammunition baby... Quokka.
Ellen: Thanks.
Christian: Not that quokka is a rodent.
Ellen: Now that kind of paints a picture like the capybara's not a good mom, but she is. I'll talk about that in a second. But yeah, so that all is just to say that they are very well adapted to thriving in aquatic environments, they're pretty good at doing a good job of eating a bunch of grass and hiding in the water. But when it comes to fighting back against predators, no real options there.
Christian: Yeah, they're good at being in the water, but so is a lot of other things there.
Ellen: So are the things that eat them. So maybe in that respect, maybe actually taking to the water was not such a great idea.
Christian: Ah well.
Ellen: But so yeah, that's the 8 out of 10 I gave them for effectiveness. For ingenuity, and this surprised me, 9 out of 10.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Clever, clever little dude, which you might not think because of the sort of pace that they live their life. at. They are on their own time. They're on the capybara clock. Like, they're actually pretty clever. I feel like since they do have some real weaknesses, they are negating those weaknesses by finding strength in numbers. So capybara live together in herds of up to 40 individuals.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: So large groups, they're very, very social. And they live together in these big groups. They're called herds, and the herd has a social hierarchy where it'll have a dominant male and then some subordinate males, and it also has the females and all of their babies. So some interesting sort of class structure in the capybara herd. Capybaras have a really complex vocal language.
Christian: Ooh!
Ellen: Yeah. I found this information in the study "Vocal Repertoire of Captive Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris): Structure, Context and Function" by Kamila S. Barros and the Applied Ethology Laboratory at the State University of Santa Cruz. What this study basically showed was that capybaras have a really complex vocal language that is comprised of seven types of calls: whistle, cry, whine, squeal, bark, click and tooth chattering. And all of those calls mean different things.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So I'm not going to break every single one of those down. If you really want a deep dive into what all of these calls mean, read the study. It's so good. But, so for example, if one capybara sees a predator, they will bark to warn their herd that there's a predator nearby, and then the herd will run into the water. But another example is this clicking sound that they make. So when the herd is moving together, all of the individuals in the herd make this clicking noise at each other and it's to coordinate their movement. And the understanding in the study was that it's a mechanism that allows them to know each other's location when they're moving through thick vegetation. Cause keep in mind they're in like marshy, rain forest sort of lands. So they might not always have eye contact with each other, they might not always have line of sight, so they have to be able to communicate with each of the vocally so that they all get to the same place.
Christian: Cool.
Ellen: Yeah. There's all these other vocalizations that they have that mean all these different things that they communicate with each other in the herd, and what was really interesting to me is that the study even noted some variation in the structures of the different calls between different herds. So they have not only a language, but they have accents.
Christian: Nice.
Ellen: So like capybaras in different herds will maybe make sounds a little differently from others. Like maybe their bark will be a different pitch.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. So it's just really cool that they have little accents from each other. Little dialects of capybara language. Another thing about herd structure is that capybara mothers will actually nurse all of the babies in the herd, not just their own.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So they're not picky. They'll just kind of nurse whatever baby they see. They'll just, they kind of stick up for each other. You know? They're very altruistic. They will take care of, you know, like a capybara mom is a mom to all capybaras.
Christian: That's nice.
Ellen: She's a very good mommy and she takes care of all of the babies, not just her own baby. The next thing that I want to talk about is their trainability. So I got this information from Hannah Louise Sinclaire, and Hannah Louise Sinclaire I have connected with on Instagram, and she has probably the coolest Instagram feed I've ever seen. So she works directly with not only capybaras but a lot of other interesting animals like bald ibis, tapirs, meerkats, all sorts of really cool stuff.
Christian: Neat.
Ellen: Yeah. So I reached out to her and I asked her if she could provide some of her experience, you know, working with capybaras and training them and providing enrichment for them and stuff. And she was so, so incredibly nice, she sent me so much awesome like, firsthand experience with capybaras.
Christian: That's awesome!
Ellen: So I really appreciated that she did that. So if you are on Instagram and you like capybaras, look up Hannah Louise Sinclaire cause that's where it's at. She told me that capybaras respond particularly well to tactile reinforcement... Chin scritches!
Christian: Yay!
Ellen: They love chin scritches. So she said they actually accept pets as rewards.
Christian: Aww...
Ellen: So she says their hair stands on end when you pet them, and that they will actively ask for pets. So they'll actually like, come up you and sort of prompt you to pet them. And she said that she's actually been able to train medical procedures like blood draws and injections just by using scritches as rewards.
Christian: That's awesome.
Ellen: Like, instead of like, a food reward. You know, like for other animals you might offer like a little a small food treat?
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: But for capybaras, they just use little scritches on the chin and that's, and they're happy about it.
Christian: How precious.
Ellen: And they just like that. Yes, it's very endearing. I really like it. She did say that training adult capybaras to follow targets- if you've ever seen, it could be something like a long stick with a ball on the end where they're supposed to like follow it. So doing target training for adult capybaras can be a little challenging at times because sometimes even though they understand the command and they know what they're supposed to do, they're very lazy and sometimes they just don't feel like it. So sometimes they can be a little bit stubborn. But Hannah says that they have definitely learned to recognize who she is, as well as her voice and the clicker that she uses to train them. She says that for the capybaras that she works with, they provide enrichment in the form of food hidden inside balls or placed up high out of reach, so that they have to work to get the food. So being rodents, naturally, they're still very skittish and even after learning to trust her over time, they still startle very easily.
Christian: Yeah...
Ellen: I thought that was all just really, really interesting. It sounds like capybaras are a real delight to work with.
Christian: Sounds like it.
Ellen: I've never gotten to actually like interact with a capybara before, but I hope that I do someday. So that is my 9 out of 10 for their ingenuity. I think they're pretty clever.
Christian: Sounds like it.
Ellen: They've kinda got life figured out, right? I think they're just all about it. This brings me to aesthetics for aesthetics, I'm giving them a 7 out of 10 for the fact that they do just kind of look pretty plain. They're just all a solid brown color. They have that wiry hair. They don't actually have the facial muscles to produce emotional expressions, so you just kind of get one flat expression where they kind of have their eyes sort of half closed. They have that very relaxed expression that reminds me of Saitama from One Punch Man.
Christian: Oh, really?
Ellen: It reminds me of that guy. Like when he's drawn in that very like simplistic style where his eyes are like half open. That's capybara town right there. Like that's what that makes me think of. Now for aesthetics, I gave them a 7 out of 10. For the capybara, I'm going to include a very special edition subcategory...
Christian: Uh oh!
Ellen: Of the chill factor, and I'm giving them a 10 out of 10.
Christian: Hot off the press!
Ellen: 10 out of 10 chill. They are indescribably chill. They're so chill that just looking at them, I feel like it just lowers your blood pressure. Like you look at a capybara and you're like, things are good. They are a very chill animal. I like if there was an Olympic event for chill, capybara would take home the gold every year.
Christian: I feel like I've seen lots of pictures and videos of them just kind of like, cuddling, laying around with each other.
Ellen: Yeah. And not just with each other, which is the weird thing. They're down to kick it with literally anybody. Like, as skittish as they can be, there is a Tumblr blog, animalssittingoncapybaras.tumblr.com...
Christian: Oh boy.
Ellen: And it's just a blog of photos of animals sitting on capybaras. My personal favorite is the goat. There are multiple pictures of capybaras with little goats standing on top of them, which is really adorable because goats will stand on top of anything. Like, we know this to be true. Goats want to be as high up as they possibly can get at all times.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: And the capybaras is just like rolling with it, like he's just totally cool with it and this goes like standing on his head. It's really cute.
Christian: Well, it's good to hear that that exists, and also that tumblr is still kickin' it.
Ellen: It's an underdog story. Another cute thing, so we talked about this recently in our Facebook group and that yielded our friend Alix at the Pomegranates and Pitchforks podcast, who is a delightful presence in our Facebook group, made a couple of very charming illustrations of a capybara being a very good mom to all of the other animals, and like tucking in like a snake and a monkey and checking in- Did you not see this?
Christian: No.
Ellen: It was so cute! She's like, like it's like capybara mom, like checking in on like... A little porcupine baby and being like, just checking on you. Oh, I didn't say the hot baths! Okay. Another cute thing that they do is in Japan, in zoos where they have capybaras, they put them in hot springs and let them take hot baths, and it's the best thing I've ever seen. Look up videos of capybaras in Japanese hot baths. They have these hot baths and these hot springs and the capybaras will just line up single file and they very slowly and calmly step into the tub one after another and then like 10 of them get in a tub altogether and they're just all packed in so tightly, but they're having a really good bath, and it's really cute! And the bath has like a bunch of lemons in it also.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: And it's very charming.
Christian: I'm imagining every one of them has a little washcloth on their block heads.
Ellen: There's one, I saw one video because I kind of went down a rabbit hole of watching capybaras taking hot baths, and in one video I saw there was one that was doing that thing where it was totally under all the water with just its nose and the top of its head sticking out of the water, and on top of its head was a leaf.
Christian: Oh!
Ellen: It's really cute. So, also if you want some really good ASMR, there are a lot of videos out there of capybara eating various foods. My favorite is the popsicle, but there's also some good ones of them eating watermelon if you're into ASMR, that's some good ones. They make very pleasant and satisfying sounds. If you're ever feeling upset, just think to yourself, what would a capybara do, and then you take a hot bath and you eat some leaves, and you make a bunch of clicking sounds.
Christian: And then get eaten.
Ellen: And then get eaten by a jaguar. So yeah, that's my 10 out of 10 chill factor, 7 out of 10 aesthetic factor for the capybara.
Christian: Very good.
Ellen: Yeah. So to wrap things up for the capybara, their conservation status is of least concern. They're doing fine. Uh, in some places where they live, they can be hunted for meat or pelts, but some captive farming efforts have sprung up to sort of offset that, where people that are consuming capybara are farming them, like breeding them and farming them, which is helping to not put so much pressure on people in that area to hunt them wild. So it's allowing wild populations to stabilize.
Christian: Sounds good.
Ellen: But they are still, of course, threatened by deforestation and habitat loss as are literally everything that lives anywhere.
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: Particularly so in the rainforest, if you live in the rainforest, there's always the looming threat of deforestation. But also a small invasive population of capybaras has been observed in Florida.
Christian: Really?
Ellen: Yep! It's unknown how many there are currently, but our habitat is pretty much perfect for them. Right?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Like we got that whole tropical forest swamp land.... We have pretty much everything a capybara needs to like, Thrive.
Christian: We have two out of the three predators though...
Ellen: ...No we don't. We got gators. I think it gator would definitely eat a capybara.
Christian: Maybe a mountain lion might go for it?
Ellen: I don't think a mountain lion would go for it. I don't think.
Christian: I feel like it would.
Ellen: I don't think it would. We don't have anacondas though.
Christian: But we have invasive pythons.
Ellen: We have invasive pythons...
Christian: Maybe not as big.
Ellen: Yeah, definitely not that big. So I feel like an adult capybara would be like, safe here where we live. I've never seen one, and I couldn't get like a good specific location where these invasive wild capybaras are, but it did say North Florida.
Christian: What?
Ellen: Yeah, it said North Florida. I guess there was some sort of research facility that had some and they escaped and went wild.
Christian: The weird Jurassic Park sequel.
Ellen: Well, but I've never seen one. But I wonder if it would be easy to mistake one for nutria?
Christian: No, nutria are much smaller.
Ellen: Yeah, I know they're much smaller, but like I wonder if anybody would ever like... See one and be like, "Oh that's a nutria" or something.
Christian: I at least I wouldn't, but- well now, I won't be so shocked if I happen to see a capybara just walking across the street. I mean, I'll be surprised, but I'll be like, "Oh okay. Yeah, that makes sense."
Ellen: That tracks. That's fine.
Christian: Or if someone lost their pet or something, I don't know.
Ellen: Now some people do keep them as pets.
Christian: Oh yeah?
Ellen: It's legal in two states. One of them is Texas, I don't remember what the other one is, but in some states it's legal to have them with an exotic pet license. So the reasoning behind that is some people think since they're so docile and non-threatening that they could be good pets. But another thing about it is that they're so social that I feel like if you were going to have one and have it thrive and do very- and be healthy and happy, you would have to have like 10 of them at least.
Christian: Yikes.
Ellen: So it's like, I dunno. It's like, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Right?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Just don't, don't do that. Don't keep them as pets. Don't keep them in your house. I'm just saying our bathtub's not that big. So that's the capybara.
Christian: Very good.
Ellen: I was- I felt like I went into this thinking this might be kind of a boring animal, because when we see them like at the zoo or something, they're usually just laying there. We've seen them get in the water and swim around a little bit, but they're almost always just kind of chilling, laying on the side, eyes closed, just vibing, basically like they're just keeping it tight. So I was a little bit worried that this would be a boring animal, but not so I felt like there were a lot more interesting than I thought they were going to be.
Christian: Very good.
Ellen: Yeah, that's the capybara.
Christian: I like them a lot.
Ellen: Me too. Before we do your animal, I just want to give a real quick shout out to our Patreon. We have some cool stuff on there, like a feed of the show with no ads and also I send out prints of photos that I've taken of cool animals. So, you know, go, go check us out at patreon.com/justthezooofus. And for this week I would like to thank our sponsors, Briana Feinberg, Krystina Sanders, and the Jungle Gym Queen. Thanks y'all.
Christian: Thank you.
Ellen: Alright baby. It's your turn.
Christian: Okay!
Ellen: Who are we talking about this week?
Christian: So this week I'm bringing to the... To the ball court...
Ellen: To the ball court...?
Christian: And deep in the paint, the Gaboon viper.
Ellen: Ooh!
Christian: Scientific name, get ready for it.
Ellen: Okay. I'm braced.
Christian: Bitis gabonica.
Ellen: Bitis?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: It bite you.
Christian: Bit us.
Ellen: It bite. We call it Bitis. Hey, we need you to come up with a, we need to come up with a name for this genus of snakes that bites real good. Um, Bitis.
Christian: So yes, Gaboon viper. This species was submitted by Sarah Horne. Thank you Sarah.
Ellen: Thanks Sarah.
Christian: And I'm getting information for this little dude from the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute website, which can be found at nationalzoo.si.edu, and also again, Animal Diversity Web from the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, found at animaldiversity.org.
Ellen: We love y'all so much.
Christian: Good source. So, let's talk about some basic stats on the Gaboon viper. Obviously a snake. So, uh, let's talk about how big these things are. So first of all, it is the largest viper in Africa. They can weigh more than 45 pounds.
Ellen: What!
Christian: Or 20 kilograms.
Ellen: That's huge for a snake, right?
Christian: That's like, two of our dog.
Ellen: Could probably eat two of our dog.
Christian: And they reach lengths of more than 6 feet, or 1.8 meters.
Ellen: This is not a little guy at all. You lied.
Christian: Yeah, you're right. Bamboozled. Uh, they can reach nearly 6 inches, or 15 centimeters across at their widest point, so they are hefty.
Ellen: This is uh, thicc.
Christian: Yeah. So, if you ever see these, pictures of these or even at a zoo, you'll notice they are kind of on the thicker side.
Ellen: I have seen, we have one at our zoo. We have one at the Jacksonville Zoo and I have seen this friend, and this is a very plump fellow.
Christian: Very much so. You'll find these in rainforests and wet areas in Central, East, and West Africa. In the wild, at least. They are popular zoo animals.
Ellen: Sure, sure sure.
Christian: Mostly because they look neat.
Ellen: They do.
Christian: They belong to the taxonomic family Viperidae, and their relatives being other vipers of course.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: So those being things like rattlesnakes, water moccasins from episode 5.
Ellen: There you go!
Christian: And copperheads.
Ellen: I feel like the water moccasin is also a little chunky.
Christian: Yeah, a little bit. I think that might be something just common though, with a lot of vipers.
Ellen: Wait, this is episode 25. We've done 50 species. Of those, two of them have been snakes, and both of them have been fat, and both of them were done by you. What's your thing with fat snakes?
Christian: So I'm starting to remember that as a kid growing up, reptiles were my favorite.
Ellen: That's true.
Christian: So that's all I've got to say about that. And the thing about vipers, there's kinda some subclasses there. So there are vipers that have pits, the heat sensing organs on there, the top of their lips. The Gaboon viper is not one of them.
Ellen: I don't know why I thought this, but I thought that the "pit" part of pit viper meant that they like... Nested in pits or something like that? I don't know why I thought- maybe I was thinking of like, the scene from Indiana Jones where there's a pit full of snakes and I'm like... I thought that they like lived in pits for some reason, and I thought those were pit vipers.
Christian: It's always snakes!
Ellen: That's the dumbest animal thing I thought.
Christian: So I'm gonna jump right into it. Effectiveness, I'm giving a 9 out of 10 for the Gaboon viper. So my first point is its camouflage. The camouflage is so the coloration of its scales and also the shape of its head and makes it so it blends in really, really well with leaf litter on the bottom of a forest floor. Its head is even shaped like a leaf.
Ellen: Oh, that makes sense! Cause I know what their head looks like and I hadn't, I hadn't made that connection.
Christian: It even has coloration that makes it look like it has a central vein going down the center of its head, that looks like what a leaf would have.
Ellen: Oh, that's what that is!
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: Wow. And they have some really interesting like, high-contrasting patterns too.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah.
Ellen: It's really cool.
Christian: Lots of browns and like, I guess white-adjacent kind of colors. Even some purple sometimes.
Ellen: Ooooh, so pretty.
Christian: Yeah. So camouflage, it's very well hidden in its natural habitat. Next point, of course, is its venom. So being part of the viper family, they're all venomous. And this one, a good bit.
Ellen: I feel like I've heard of them being ranked as like, some of the most venomous.
Christian: So here's the thing. Yes, it is venomous and you do not want to be bit by them. It has a very bad rap for its bites. There had been people that have died from it.
Ellen: Oh no.
Christian: But it's rare. I'll get into a little bit why that's rare, but let me just talk about the venom. So its venom contains neurotoxin and hematoxin, so it destroys blood cells and vessels. But here's the thing about its venom: pound for pound, it's not particularly toxic as compared to other snakes. But here's the thing, it doesn't have to be. It has some of the largest venom snack... Venom snacks.
Ellen: Venom snacks!
Christian: It has some of the largest venom sacs of any venomous snake. So what it lacks in toxicity, it makes up for in quantity.
Ellen: Oh, so it's just pumping you full of this stuff?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Oh, okay. Interesting.
Christian: So when you look at its head, you'll notice that, you know, the part of its head where the venom sacs are, are very bulbous. Right?
Ellen: It's got big old cheeks.
Christian: Yep. Yep. Those are death cheeks.
Ellen: It's kind of like how, you know, like chipmunks will store their food and their cheeks, but the Gaboon viper stores hatred and death in its cheeks.
Christian: Yep. And also, kind of the last point about effectiveness, it has the longest fangs of all venomous snakes that go up to 2 inches, or 5 centimeters.
Ellen: Wow. Some big toofers.
Christian: They're big. So they get deep, and they can pump a lot of venom in there.
Ellen: That's an interesting approach. They're like, "Hmm, instead of making really, really good poison, we'll just make a bunch of it."
Christian: Yeah. Basically. So I'm going to move on to ingenuity. I'm giving it a 7 out of 10 for ingenuity.
Ellen: That's not bad.
Christian: So Gaboon vipers are passive hunters, meaning they usually go somewhere that they know prey will frequent, and they just sit and wait until something walks along. It's still relying on its camouflage.
Ellen: It's like an ambush predator.
Christian: Yeah, yeah. And it's nocturnal. The next point I'm going to give is its placid nature.
Ellen: Placid?
Christian: Yes. It very rarely bites humans. If we're talking about the chill factor for snakes, it's pretty high up there.
Ellen: This was an unexpected common thread for this episode. I feel like a lot of times we end up finding some sort of like, hidden surprise theme. I didn't think the chill factor was going to be it.
Christian: They don't look chill at all.
Ellen: No, they don't. They don't look like it. They look very extra.
Christian: So most bites with humans happen when they get stepped on, because of their very good camouflage.
Ellen: No step on snek.
Christian: Yeah. They'll usually hiss before biting, but you know, if they get stepped on, they can't get away. They're going to bite. They're more likely to bite when they're hungry, so it could be a case of mistaken identity.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: That's more so in captive settings. So when you're feeding Gaboon vipers, a lot of the cases you hear about of people being bitten by a Gaboon viper happen with captive snakes.
Ellen: I've never had a pet snake myself, but you have.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Did your snake ever bite you because it was hungry?
Christian: I have never- I was never bitten by my snake, but there's something from that experience that I will never ever forget. When I went to the pet shop with my mom, and this was in Rhode Island, to pick out a pet, and which I would ultimately pick a ball python, but I asked the person working there, "does it bite?" And what he said, I'll always remember, he says, "if it has a mouth, it can bite."
Ellen: Yes. Except... The anteater.
Christian: Yes. It just kind of, *thwpp* I don't know what you call that.
Ellen: The anteater and the tamandua will not bite you, BUT the point still stands.
Christian: Yeah. So even though these guys are normally very placid, I still do not recommend messing with them.
Ellen: Yeah, still don't, y'all.
Christian: One story I read about someone that was bitten by a Gaboon viper that they owned and ultimately died from was, you know, they weren't doing the proper handling methods. They weren't using like the snake... Stick, I dunno what you call it. Um, it has like a little grabby thing at the end of it.
Ellen: I know what you're talking about.
Christian: Tthis person was just bare-handed, you know, grabbing these things.
Ellen: Oh my God. I don't know how to explain to people not to do that.
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
Ellen: Like I don't know how to tell people, don't just kinda Leroy Jenkins your Gaboon viper.
Christian: So while these things can be very dangerous, the bites are very rare because of this nature, and also they're kind of reclusive. The kind of the rap they have is a little unwarranted. Just a little. Cause we're talking, you know, number of bodies, it's negligible, almost.
Ellen: I guess what you're going for is like, they're not as aggressive as you might think.
Christian: Yeah. They're not just like dealing death left and right. You know. Another thing that they do that I counted towards ingenuity is that a lot of venomous snakes, when they do a strike, they'll bite quickly, inject some venomum- Venomum.
Ellen: Venomum?
Christian: You take venom, and you mix it with cinnamon, and then you're basically dead.
Ellen: My favorite breakfast is a venomum roll.
Christian: Just like grandmanum used to make. Okay, okay, okay. So most venomous snakes, it's a very quick action. It's a bite, inject, release. Very quick. You can blink and miss it, basically.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: These guys do not do that. They bite and they hold on. They don't let go.
Ellen: Oh! They're comin for ya.
Christian: So this goes back to that method of quantity of venom.
Ellen: Oh, that makes sense. They're probably just trying to pump as much venom as they can in there.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: That's cool!
Christian: Now it also helps with the thing not getting away. Right? Cause if this big snake is latched on, they don't have to run it down after it dies. It's still here.
Ellen: I feel like a lot of venomous snakes do that catch and release thing, right? Where they bite and then back off because they're relying on their venom to kill the prey, so the prey is not gonna get that far. Right? Like they can just follow it and they know it's going to die soon anyway, but... Or you could just hang on.
Christian: And with smaller animals, of course, this venom is going to be very quick. And the last thing I give it for ingenuity, it can control the amount of venom delivered, even to the point where it can deliver none.
Ellen: Oh, this is a dry bite! I've heard of this!
Christian: Yes. Known as a dry bite. So the effects of a bite from a Gaboon viper can range from no effect to rapid death.
Ellen: So nothing could happen, or you could immediately die.
Christian: So here's the problem. So you don't know. There's no way to know until you've spent enough time to say like, "Oh, okay, I'm still alive. I'm not experiencing any issues. That must've been a dry bite." You cannot count on that.
Ellen: That's true. I want to see that Web MD page that says like, effects may include: nothing, or death.
Christian: Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a whole, you know, spectrum of things that happen in between there. Cause the problem with this kind of venom is necrosis. So you're talking about losing some flesh maybe, or even an entire limb being amputated, depending on how bad it is. So when someone is bitten by a Gaboon viper, they're going to go to the hospital no matter what. You might be life-flown (life-flighted? I don't know) right out of there to the closest hospital. And this is the sort of thing where you're probably gonna need antivenom flown in from the nearest research institute. I think there's one with the San Diego Zoo.
Ellen: Oh gosh. Well, I imagine if you're encountering one in the wild, and you're in Africa and the nearest antivenom is... wherever.
Christian: Well, I mean, yeah, so there's, there's a whole like listing of, you know, who carries what in terms of antivenom for the United States, you know, San Diego Zoo is one of them. I think, the National Zoo is another one. But anyway, so here's the thing: they don't know if it was a dry bite. So you're going to go to a hospital, you're going to be in intensive care, you're going to be on an I.V., they're going to have five vials of this antivenom ready to go. Five to ten, cause it kind of depends.
Ellen: Oh, jeez. Yeah.
Christian: So that's under close, close observation until they, it's like 24 to 48 hours before they could say definitively it was a dry bite.
Ellen: Oh my God. That is so stressful.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: That is, I'm secondhand stressed. I feel like we should have talked about the Gaboon viper first so that, we should have done this one first so that the capybara could be our comedown from that. Cause now I'm stressed and I need to think about capybaras and I need to go take a hot bath and eat some leaves.
Christian: So I think this is actually some good advice for any snake bite, especially one that you suspect is a venomous snake. Go to the hospital, try and identify what the snake was.
Ellen: So what you're saying is I should get out my phone, and make sure that I get a good in-focus picture of the snake, and then post it on iNaturalist and then wait for three to five verified species IDs...
Christian: Uh-huh.
Ellen: And then take that to the hospital.
Christian: You will already be dead. So yeah, a 7 out of 10 for ingenuity. I thought its methods are interesting and works to its strengths.
Ellen: So the dry bite is a troll mechanic. You're griefing at that point.
Christian: So yeah, the big range of what can happen depending on how much venom it put inside you.
Ellen: They have a rudeness factor going.
Christian: I saw somewhere it was a graph of different kind of venomous snakes, where it was saying how much in volume of its venom is considered fatal versus how much it typically injects with a bite. For the Gaboon viper, it's something like two or three times the necessary amount, at it's maximum.
Ellen: Oh my gosh. Well, okay, so they live in Africa, right? They're probably like chasing down some pretty big prey. They probably have a good reason to be maxing out that much venom.
Christian: So they eat small and medium-sized mammals and birds. They found specimens that have had ingested giant rats, brush-tailed porcupines....
Ellen: Okay. The porcupine doesn't seem like an intuitive prey for an animal that has to swallow its prey whole.
Christian: So I did a quick Google on this particular porcupine. It is very different from what you're probably thinking of, the North American porcupine. The brush-tailed porcupine, its quills are mostly centered on its tail and less pronounced.
Ellen: Still though.
Christian: Yeah, still, but it's nowhere near as bad as the ridiculousness of the North American porcupine, which is just quills everywhere.
Ellen: Yeah, that just doesn't seem like a good idea though, right?
Christian: I mean, headfirst. Don't throw it up. Please don't throw it up. I can't imagine a worse death.
Ellen: I feel like if I was a snake and I knew that anything I wanted to eat, I had to swallow whole, I feel like I would see the porcupine and be like, hmm, maybe not.
Christian: I bet it's spicy. So, then the last thing that they found in these snakes is what's known as a royal antelope.
Ellen: Royal antelope?
Christian: Fully grown royal antelope, and these are the world's smallest antelope.
Ellen: Aww! See you talked it up like this thing had a fully grown adult antelope in its belly and then it's like, Oh it's a little one.
Christian: So this is what prompted me to look up some information, cause that sounded a little farfetched. Because I'm thinking like, full deer size, but it's not. It is the world's smallest antelope, it is 50 centimeters long and weighs 3 kilograms.
Ellen: It's just a teeny!
Christian: Like, 5 or 6 pounds.
Ellen: It's just a baby!
Christian: Yeah, it's cute, and snake food apparently. Moving on to aesthetics, this one was pretty straightforward. I was very impressed by its coloration and its camouflage. I gave it a 9 out of 10 for aesthetics. So, yeah, we talked about this, the pattern on its skin, its head shape, very leaf-shaped and it has a little... Kind of like a upward spike on its like, nose.
Ellen: It makes me think of Jasmine from Aladdin, it makes me think of her shoe.
Christian: Oh, okay. I can see that.
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: Their eyes are interesting too. You know, snake eyes are always interesting to look at. But finally, my last point for aesthetics is chonk.
Ellen: They're very plump and it's very pleasing. They kind of plop down on the ground, right?
Christian: But again, do not touch! Don't do it!
Ellen: You know, and what sucks is that they look soft, too. Don't they?
Christian: Don't touch that they forbiddien cuddle noodle.
Ellen: It's a dangerous noodle.
Christian: Don't do it.
Ellen: But they look so soft and they look so fat and they look like you could give them a big old hug.
Christian: I wouldn't, though!
Ellen: Hey, I might be fine, though.
Christian: I mean you wake up every day, you don't know if you're going to live or die. What's the difference?
Ellen: Listen, I'll roll those dice. I don't care.
Christian: So that's my aesthetic score, 9 out of 10. Some more wrapping up information: the conservation status is actually not evaluated.
Ellen: Really?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: That's surprising.
Christian: Yeah. I thought it's a little interesting with its reproduction. So they usually mate in the rainy season in Africa, which is from September to December.
Ellen: They bless the rains down in Africa.
Christian: Yes. Excellent. In captivity, they can simulate this by just spraying them with water to uh, grease the wheels, if you will. Uh, they have a seven month gestation period. They give birth- here's the surprising part- to 50 to 60 live babies at a time.
Ellen: Live babies!
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: And also that's very many.
Christian: Yes. Evidently, most vipers give live birth.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: Yeah. I didn't know that.
Ellen: Okay, this is that viviparous life.
Christian: Yeah. The young, they're born up to 30 centimeters, or 11.8 inches long already at birth.
Ellen: Okay, hold on. So go back to the thing you said about how many.
Christian: Yes. 50 to 60.
Ellen: 50 to 60, and each one of them is like, pushing a foot long.
Christian: That's their max. That is their max.
Ellen: [stressed sigh]
Christian: And they already have the same coloration and patterns as the adults when they're born.
Ellen: My thoughts and prayers are with the Gaboon viper.
Christian: There's no real parental care after being born.
Ellen: That's kinda what reptiles do. They kinda...
Christian: Except for alligators, I guess.
Ellen: Gators are good moms, compared to the rest of the reptiles. The rest of the reptiles are like, all right, go do your thing.
Christian: I think we talked about this, but if a little baby gator is calling someone, you probably want to put it down.
Ellen: If they're making a sound, you want to go ahead and leave.
Christian: That's its call for mama.
Ellen: Yeah. And she's comin'.
Christian: Yeah. And then finally their lifespan is around 20 years.
Ellen: That's a long lived snake, huh?
Christian: Yeah, so that's the Gaboon viper.
Ellen: This is such a good snake. It's so satisfying.
Christian: Yup. You can see them in lots of zoos. If you find yourself in a position where this is relevant, do not touch, do not pick up.
Ellen: You know what, with any sort of creative pursuit, you always feel like you've put something good into the world and you want to feel like you've had an impact. If we can save one person's life by letting them know not to touch Gaboon vipers, I would like to hope that someday, someone is out there like, trekking through the African forest and they come across a Gaboon viper, and you see them like, slowly reached down to touch it and then you see them just like think for a second... And your voice echoes through the chamber of their memory and they're like, "Wait, Christian from Just the Zoo of Us told me not to touch these things... I might be okay though."
Christian: I hate that guy! I'm gonna do it anyway!
Ellen: Said, "I remember distinctly him saying that they're gonna bite me, but I might be fine. Nothing might happen. I'm gonna go for it."
Christian: Yeah, I mean...
Ellen: Don't do that. Don't flip that coin.
Christian: Gotta break some eggs...
Ellen: To make an omelet? Is that what you're talking about? What's the omelet here that we're trying to make?
Christian: Knowledge. That's all I got.
Ellen: Okay baby. Thank you so much. You did a great job.
Christian: Thank you.
Ellen: That was a lovely snake. Thank you for talking about it. So thank you so much to everybody who has been tuning in and listening and spending this time with us. Also, thank you to everybody who has been reviewing us on your podcatchers, and especially thank you to people who have been recommending us to your friends and family and cohorts and comrades and all that good stuff. So, thank you so much for doing that. It means a lot to us. You can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Just search the title of the show. You'll get there. I promise. If you have an animal species that you want to hear us talk about, you can either get those to us on social media. It would be really cool if you tweeted them at us. I would like that. That'd be fun. Go ahead and do that.
Christian: Do it!
Ellen: Tweet them at us! But you can also email them to me at ellen@justhezooofus.com. A transcript of this episode will be made available at justthezooofus.com, and last note, thank you Louie Zong for the use of your song "Adventuring" off of the album Bee Sides.
Christian: Thank you, thank you.
Ellen: We love it. In fact, it's playing right now. Bye!
Christian: There it goes! Bye!