5: Blue Dragon Sea Slug & Water Moccasin
Ellen: Hello, this is Ellen Weatherford...
Christian: ...and Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: ....and we're here with Just the Zoo of Us, the podcast in which Christian I review your favorite species of animals. Each species that we review, we rate out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and aesthetics. We are not zoological experts.
Christian: No, not at all.
Ellen: No, Christian and I are just enthusiasts. We love animals very much and we have a lot of opinions on them. We do a lot of research and we really try our best to make sure we're presenting information from trustworthy sources.
Christian: But by all means, let us know if we're wrong.
Ellen: Yeah, please feel free to reach out to us. We can now be connected with on Twitter at @JustTheZooOfUs or on Facebook by searching the title of the show. We have our very own page now, that's brand new by the way, I set that up this week. This is our first time recording having released an episode already. This is episode five, so in episode five we are launching a brand new feature. This is a listener submission. This is a species that was requested by our dear friend Erica Carr. So, Christian went first last week, so I'm going to be going first this week so I'm just gonna jump right into it if you don't mind, Christian.
Christian: Of course. Let's hear it.
Ellen: Alright. The animal that I have today is actually an animal that I knew nothing about prior to Erica bringing it to my attention. This is the Glaucus atlanticus, also known as the Blue Dragon Sea slug or the blue angel, the sea swallow, some people even call it the sea lizard. Now this is not an animal that I think a lot of people know very much about, but you've probably seen a picture of it because recently back in 2015 a whole group of these washed up on shore in Australia, so pictures and videos of them got really, really popular, kind of went viral for a minute, so a lot of people have seen them. I'm going to kind of describe what they look like to you because you probably have actually seen a picture of it, just didn't know what it was called because they're pretty rare. They're very rare to see. They are a sea slug, so they're actually a type of nudibranch, which is a type of sea slug. They're very, very little. They're only- they're less than one and a half inch long. So this is about a fingernail-sized animal.
Ellen: It's smol.
Ellen: It's very little. It's really little. But so they are, they have a tapered body. They're thick at the head end, but they taper out towards the tail end. But the really striking feature of these sea slugs is that they have these six wings. So this is three pairs of wings on either side of the body. These are made of these really feathery looking tentacles, which is why I call them wings. So the pair of wings closest to the head is really big, but they get smaller towards the end of the body. So that's why it looks like a dragon, cause it looks like a long sort of snake shaped animal with wings. It looks like a dragon.
Christian: You know what it makes me think of when I see it?
Ellen: What's that?
Christian: The Pokemon Kyogre.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. It does look like Kyogre very much and actually when I was looking this up, I found a lot of people refer to it as the Pokemon slug. Like, it- A lot of parallels have been drawn. A lot of fan artists have made fake Pokemon designs out of this animal. It's, it's beautiful to look at. So another striking feature about it is its coloration. It is dark blue and white, so it has a very, very high contrast look to it. It looks very much like an alien. I'll get more into the appearance of it later on. As I mentioned before, I'm not an expert or anything, so I wanted to give a shout out to where I'm getting my information from. I got a lot of my information from a website called Oceana.org, I also got a lot of my information in reports, um one of them being by Vanessa Uschenko at the University of Northern British Columbia and Kenneth Hattersley at the sea slug forum. They both had very interesting, very detailed reports on the blue dragon sea slug. So that's where my information is coming from, just to credit to them. So I already mentioned that these are little guys. They're only about three centimeters or one and a half inch long. You can find them pretty much anywhere in an open ocean.
Ellen: So these are common in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and I wouldn't say common, I'm sorry. They're not common. So most nudibranches are benthic, which means that they live at the bottom of the ocean and feed down in like reefs or on stuff at the bottom of the ocean, but the blue glaucous is more likely to be found up near the surface of the water. I'll talk about why in a minute, but that's where you're going to find them. This also contributes to why they look the way they do. So we'll, we'll talk about that in a second. Their taxonomic class is gastropoda. This is the same class as the snails and the slugs that you would find on land. This is, yeah, it's a sea slug. Specifically, it is a nudibranch, there are about 3000 species of nudibranches.
Christian: That's a lot.
Ellen: There are so many. So this one is a pretty interesting one. It's a little bit different from other nudibranches but super interesting. All nudibranches are interesting. This one specifically so, for the reasons I'm about to list. So, first category I'm going to rate it on his effectiveness, effectiveness being how physically capable the animal is of doing the things it's trying to do. For the Blue Dragon sea slug, I gave it a nine out of 10.
Christian: Very cool.
Ellen: That's a very good score. It's not perfect but it's very good. So first of all I wanted to talk about its camouflage. So the, as I mentioned before, the blue glaucus on the side... I'm tempted to say its "back," but it's not its back. On the side that is facing up, the side you would be looking at when you're looking down at it, is this dark blue and white. Very high contrast in color. When you look at it from below, what's actually their back (because they actually float upside down) their back is a very pale gray or a white color. This is a really common coloration pattern that you see in animals that live in the open ocean. This is called countershading. This makes it so that when you're looking at them from above, they blend in with the dark blue of the water below them. When you look at them from below, they blend in with the white of the sky above them. So this makes it really kind of difficult for predators to see them. They also, I mentioned that they float upside down, so their "belly," or what's actually like when you translate it to the terms of a snail or a slug, a gastropod, that's actually their "foot." So, um, what would, what would be the underside in a snail or a slug is for them facing upward because in that belly they hold a little air bubble in it. So they, they swallow air and keep air in their belly and that keeps them floating upside down.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: That keeps them up at the top of the water. I'll go into why they want to stay at the top of the water in a minute. They have those six wings, so that's three pairs on either side of the body with these feathery looking tentacles. Those tentacles are called cerata. Cerata is what they're called, and they're fanned out in the shape of what I would describe as a palmetto frond, how they're kind of all clustered together at a point and then they fan out like that. They look like fins, and you may assume that they're fins, but it's really, uh, it's really shameful trying to watch them use them to move because they try. They wiggle and they moved them, and they try to get where they need to go, but they just can't. It offers little to no propulsion in the water. So they're kind of at the mercy of the wind to get where they need to go. This is why I took one point off of their effectiveness because their mobility is trash. Garbage. They cannot get anywhere, like they are totally at the mercy of the current of the water to get anywhere. The real usefulness of the cerata is defensive. This is a combat wing. This, these are like built for damage. The cerata, let's talk about these cerata cause they're insane. The glaucus eats siphonophores. This is including the highly venomous Portuguese man of war.
Christian: Ooh! That's my favorite.
Ellen: I know you like them! So, well, I'm sorry, but the blue glaucus eats them.
Christian: Oh...
Ellen: Eats them tentacles and all.
Christian: Ohhh! My poor Portuguese.!
Ellen: I'm sorry to trash on your favorite animal, but this is its natural predator. So the glaucus has powerful jaws that contain these rows of sharp chitinous teeth. The glaucus just kind of latches on and just chomps chomps chomps. Just munches on the Portuguese man of war and eats the whole thing. So what's really interesting is that the glaucus is immune to the sting of the Portuguese man of war. Not only is it immune to the sting, but its body passes the nematocysts, which are the cells that produce the sting and produce venom that causes the Portuguese man of war to sting, the body passes those nematocysts along through the digestive system, which feeds into the cerata. So the nematocysts are stored in those cerata and highly concentrated.
Christian: What!
Ellen: Yes. So the blue glaucus is taking the venom from the prey that it's eating, storing it in its own body and weaponizing it.
Christian: So let me get this straight.
Ellen: Yes.
Christian: This little guy, he's going after the highly feared Portuguese man of war.
Ellen: Yup.
Christian: Eating it.
Ellen: Yes.
Christian: And then when it gets attacked, it's just like, "you're making me more strong! Ahahaha!"
Ellen: Your resistance is only making way more powerful!
Christian: And I feel like I've seen pictures of people holding these in their hands.
Ellen: It's a bad idea. Don't do that. Don't do that at all. So...
Christian: You're going to have a bad time.
Ellen: Real quick sidebar about that is that when you see videos and pictures of people holding them, they've probably only found it because it's washed up on the beach. So by the time they've reached the beach, they've probably already used up all of those nematocysts and probably aren't going to be delivering those stings, but you really don't want to chance it because if they haven't, and they still have- because remember, they're concentrated. This is like they're eating multiple Portuguese man of war and storing all of that venom, so it's far, far, far more concentrated than just one Portuguese man of war, which is like a really intense sting by itself. This is like a bunch of them condensed into one sting, so you really don't want to chance it. Seriously, do not touch these things.
Christian: When you see pictures of people who have stings from the man of war, it kind of looks like someone took metal wire that was heated until it's white hot and just pressed against their skin.
Ellen: It does look like you've been branded.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: And this is like emergency room level. Like you got to be rushed to a hospital if you've been stung by one of these things. So yeah, the Blue Glock is, is just completely immune to it and not only immune to it, but weaponizes it and steals it and uses it to its own advantage. So that's why they have those cerata. It's moreso for delivering that sting rather than actually using them to swim, which you can see when you see a video of these things trying to swim in the water because it is pitiful. Garbage. They cannot swim. It's so bad. They really try though. Like you can see them flapping their little wings but they're just not going anywhere. It's real sad. But I still wouldn't touch them though. I mean where are they trying to get in such a hurry? Nothing can... I mean they're protecting themselves from predators by you know, delivering this ridiculously powerful sting. They've got their camouflage covered, they've got their self defense covered. They're pretty tough. You know, I guess I didn't take any more off for mobility cause I figured that mobility was not that big of a concern for them.
Christian: I mean, to give them credit, their uh, their main prey is even less mobile.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean when your main prey is something that just floats on top of the water...
Ellen: Yeah, it's completely dependent
Ellen: It has no method of moving whatsoever, they're pretty evenly matched. Yeah. So they do eat other things. They don't just eat the Portuguese man of war, but that's really most of what they eat. They'll eat other things like the blue button jellyfish or some other types of snails and stuff, but it's really just the, the man of war that they're interested in.
Christian: I wonder if their resistance to the man of war is staying kind of extends to the stings of jellyfish.
Ellen: Yeah, because it's similar. It's a similar type of cell, right? So a nematocyst is a type of cell and they have- the blue glaucus's digestive system is lined with this mucus that prevents them from being affected by it.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah. So it's really cool. They're totally just impervious to it.
Christian: Neat.
Ellen: It's really nice. So that's kind of the most interesting thing about this animal, I thought. They're also, as other nudibranches, they are hermaphrodites. All of them. They, every blue glaucus functions as both a male and a female, but they can't fertilize their own eggs. So they still do have to mate in pairs. So every blue glaucus produces these spiral shaped eggs, which they lay by either just kind of like firing them off into the ocean or if it's available, they will lay their eggs on some sort of floating structure, like if there's a log floating in the water or what's really common is for them to lay their eggs on the carcasses of their prey. Like dead carcasses of their prey.
Christian: Huh! Well then.
Ellen: They will lay their eggs on there. It's pretty smart.
Christian: Wrapping it up there.
Ellen: Yeah. They detect their prey and their surroundings by using these things called rhinophores. These are sensory preceptors that look like these two tiny little tentacles on either side of their head and these rhinophores pickup signals in the water that are, like chemical signals that alerts them to the direction of their objective, I suppose. It's like a little quest marker that just tells you which direction you need to go in. But like I said before, there's nothing they can do with that information. They can just kind of like orient themselves towards the thing they want to go to and like hope for the best.
Christian: I sure hope I or my prey float towards each other.
Ellen: That's really the best they can do. And you can see that they will try to swim towards the thing, but... They're not getting anywhere.
Christian: A for effort.
Ellen: Yeah, they're trying at least. So that's about it for effectiveness. 9 out of 10, pretty good. Actually really good.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. So moving on to ingenuity, which is defined by us as the species cleverness.
Christian: So in, in other animals, a good example of this would be use of tools or um, use of interesting methods, things that aren't necessarily built him.
Ellen: Yeah. This is how their behavior and how well their behavior gives them an advantage. So I gave the blue glaucus a five out of 10, which is not great, but better than I expected a sea slug to get. Five out of 10. They will resort to cannibalism if no other prey is available, which you'll remember I gave the praying mantis a 4 out of 10 for cannibalism, but I gave them a 5 out of 10 because the praying mantis would just kind of attack their own kind with no sort of differentiation between their kind and not their kind. However, the blue glaucus does prioritize. It would rather eat not blue glaucus than other blue glaucus. So this is kind of like out of desperation. It's a last resort. They'll, they'll eat each other if they absolutely have to. So at least they are sort of self preserving.
Christian: The, the thought of two of these things trying to eat each other is a little entertaining cause I'm, I'm imagining them firing off those little stinging cells at each other and they're just like, haha no, no you! Just back and forth.
Ellen: I wonder if they could just recycle those, like, like recycle the already stolen nematocysts of the other one.
Christian: Like tennis but deadly.
Ellen: Yeah. So the other thing I gave them an ingenuity point for was that um, laying their eggs on floating structures because this allows their babies to develop their air sacs without sinking to the bottom.
Christian: Oh, okay.
Ellen: Yeah. So like how I said they have those air sacs that keep them afloat, that gives their babies a chance to get air from the surface before like really getting into the ocean. So I thought that was a pretty good idea. That's a good idea. You lay your eggs on a floating structure, so you're up there where you need to be.
Christian: I guess. I guess they have to hope, though, that the floating structure will remain floating for long enough for the development cycle.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean I would hope it wouldn't be like how we watched that special on the sperm whale carcass that sank to the bottom of the ocean. Like they better hope that doesn't happen. I would imagine if they're, if they're planting their eggs on their dead prey, though, that's like other things that are gonna float.
Christian: Hopefully.
Ellen: Yeah, so I thought that was a pretty good idea. That's a pretty bright little idea that they had so I gave them a point for it. So that's five out of 10 that's okay. So for aesthetics, which is purely opinion based, by the way, and based entirely on how I feel about it, I gave them an 8 out of 10 these are definitely aliens. 100% no chance that these are of earthly origin just based on their looks. These are aliens. They're just like, the whole body has that really elegant tapered appearance with the wings being bigger at the head and getting smaller towards the tail.
Ellen: They have a surprisingly cute face. Like if you zoom in on their face and look at it, it's really cute. It has this like blunt shape to it and those rhinophores that I mentioned, these two tiny little tentacles on the side of the head, it's really cute. It reminds me of a, of a Manta rays face. How has those two little nubbies on the face? I think it's pretty cute. And also that really beautiful blue and white design that they have on their bodies just makes them really stand out and just makes them look really, really cool. I did take off one point for their very clumsy and ungraceful movement. So when you see a still picture, they look like they would just be this elegant, graceful, like drifting through the water and being so beautiful. But when you watch a video of them, it's really tragic.
Ellen: They're just kind of drifting their best and like clumsily flapping their little wings around. It's sad. But, so I took one point off for their ungracefulness and I took another point off for them being unsettlingly Lovecraftian in appearance. They can be a little creepy looking. If you're not into the tentacled look, this is probably not an ideal aesthetic for you. But so they do kind of look slightly eldritch horror-ish. So that's...
Christian: I could see that.
Ellen: That's a point off, but 8 out of 10 for aesthetics. So going back, that is a 9 out of 10 for effectiveness, a 5 out of 10 for ingenuity and an 8 out of 10 for aesthetics, which brings us to an overall score of 7.3 out of 10 for the Blue Dragon Sea Slug.
Christian: Pretty good.
Ellen: Yep! Some wrapping up and with some miscellaneous information, their conservation status is not evaluated. They are pretty rare because they are, they live out in the open ocean. How often are you going to find a three centimeter long animal out in the ocean? You're not going to be finding these very often. So in a group they're called a fleet, so you're most likely to find one in a fleet. These fleets of blue dragons will sometimes wash up on beaches, which causes problems because beach goers then are at risk of being stung in the water. And because you, you, you're not going to see them, they're so little, you're not going to notice them in the water. Or sometimes if you do see them, you're likely to try to handle them because they're really pretty looking and you might want to like, "Ooh, so pretty" and you might want to pick it up.
Ellen: And they're like, "don't like that! Bzzzt!"
Ellen: Don't like that thing! Bzzzt. Goodbye. So it's not great. Beach goers are at risk. Although I looked it up, everyone says that this is like a deadly creature, but I couldn't actually find any records of anyone dying from handling one. I looked, but I couldn't find any cases specifically of somebody dying from handling this animal.
Christian: Yeah, that sounds about right. A lot of animals I feel like have there deadliness kind of over exaggerated.
Ellen: I don't know if it's an exaggeration, but I'm sure it has the potential to be deadly.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: Because people have died from Portuguese man of war stings.
Christian: Of course.
Ellen: So, and this is just like that times 10 so I'm sure it has a potential to be deadly. I just could not find any cases of that actually happening.
Christian: Well, I wonder though if it's actually worse because you know the, the tentacles of a Portuguese man where it can be like several feet long, right? So I think maybe there's a potential there because the whole tentacle just gets wrapped up and get all of that. So I'm wondering which ones actually worse, but uh... Hm.
Ellen: I don't know. This phenomenon of the fleet of blue dragons, sea slugs washing up on the shore happened on Australia's Gold Coast in 2015 which led to that popularity boom while people were taking videos and photos of them, they got way more popular around that time. A little more locally to us, this happened at Hillsboro Beach in south Florida in 2016 and also in Cape Canaveral in February of 2018.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah, these were all a examples of, or occurrences of blue dragon fleets washing up on beaches. So most of the footage that you'll see of blue dragons is from these washing up on shore.
Christian: I do like this imagery. So this big group known as a fleet of these blue dragons showing up on a beach. In my mind, I'm hearing the, the Flight of the Valkyries.
Ellen: So it's very on theme for the Game of Thrones finale, uh, coming out tomorrow night as of when we're recording this on Saturday. Yeah. So the fleet of dragons just kind of tragically washing up on shore dead.
Christian: Foreshadowing?
Ellen: Rip.
Christian: All right.
Ellen: Yeah. So you're likely to have only seen these recorded under these circumstances because the blue glaucus has never been successfully kept or bred in captivity. This is likely due to their extremely specific diet because who has the means to keep this tiny little creature fed with Portuguese? Man of war? Where are you going to find those? Where are you going shopping for a Portuguese man war? They don't sell those at PetSmart. They ain't got 'em in bulk at Costco.
Christian: It's probably a good thing.
Ellen: Yeah, I'm pretty, I'm pretty thankful that they don't sell those at Costco. I'm made uncomfortable enough by the fish displays and lobster displays. So like if they had those hell beasts just sitting there in their fish department, I would never leave my house. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not going to find these, you can't keep them as a pet. You're not gonna find them in a zoo, you're not gonna find them in an aquarium, which I think is likely why so little overall is known about the animal just because they're really hard to find. They're hard to study. They're hard to observe. What we do know about them is really interesting. So I had a really fun time looking up this animal and I'm a big fan of it. I only gave it a 7.3 out of 10 but for a sea slug, that's not bad. That's pretty good for a sea slug. I'll probably go into other sea slugs and nudibranch species later on, so...
Christian: It's an interesting little family.
Ellen: We'll see how they square up against other of their cousins. So that's the blue glaucus. That's the Blue Dragon Sea Slug.
Christian: Well thank you.
Ellen: Yep. Thank you! All right, Christian, what you got for us?
Christian: Alright. So for this week I've got another Florida classic.
Ellen: Great.
Christian: I personally have always known this animal as the water moccasin. So I know a lot of areas have their own kind of common name for them. I think the more common name for them is the cotton mouth.
Ellen: Yesss!
Christian: Um, so this is a snake, of course, it is venomous. Right. Um, so I'm just going to jump right in. Its scientific name: Agkistrodon piscivorus.
Ellen: Ooh.
Christian: So what that literally translates to is "hooked tooth fish eater."
Ellen: That's the thing. That's what it is and does.
Christian: For sure, because it's diet is primarily fish and Fabian's pretty much any small vertebrate, but mostly fish and amphibians. So this, this I say this is a Florida classic because uh, we can find these snakes pretty much anywhere in the southeast United States. Yes. Common in fresh water, but can be found in salt. It's usually only found in salt water when it's trying to travel from one place to another.
Ellen: Sure, sure, sure. That's not their hangout. Yeah.
Christian: Yeah. In Florida, his case, that's usually, and they're trying to travel to or from a barrier island from the mainland.
Ellen: Oh, okay. Okay. That makes sense. This is also why we don't go into water here. We've got gators, we've got water moccasins, we have so many things in our water that we'd want nothing to do with.
Christian: Yeah. This particular snake has a... Legacy, I suppose of aggression and which I will touch on a little later.
Ellen: Yes! They're so mean.
Christian: They belong to the taxonomic order Squamata which, um, other things that are in there are lizards and other snakes, basically scaled reptiles. As Ellen did, we have some categories. The first one being effectiveness, I gave this snake a full 10 out of 10 for effectiveness.
Ellen: That's awesome!
Christian: So here's the reason why. They are pretty much built to just own the water.
Ellen: Yes. Absolutely.
Ellen: So they hold the interesting distinction of being the world's only semi-aquatic viper.
Ellen: Semi-aquatic viper meaning they sort of live in the water?
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're not totally in the water. Not like a, not like a sea snake. Right, right. So, um, the water moccasin can be found up to even like a mile away from a water source, but they do enjoy being in wetlands. So, like I said, world's only semi aquatic viper and other examples of vipers are the copper head, the rattlesnake and those kinds of snakes. In addition to that title, it's also the u s is only venomous waters think so there are, there are other water snakes too, but this is the only one in the U.S. that is venomous. Sure. So, uh, as you might guess, it's an excellent swimmer. They will move through the water pretty easily. They're fast.
Ellen: They're quick! They're way quicker than you might think they would be.
Christian: And because they are a viper, they have heat-sensing pits between their eyes and nostrils. So a lot of the times when you hear this talked about on, for example, documentaries, they visualize that with something like infrared camera. Basically what it is, it lets them see heat, a lot of their prey will have body heat. However, here's, here's something interesting I thought about the water moccasin: they usually go for live prey, but they have been documented as going after carrion.
Ellen: Really!
Christian: So, for example, the fishing dock, you know where they're butchering fish and throwing parts into the water, they've been observed eating those bits. Yeah.
Ellen: I wouldn't have thought of a snake as a scavenger.
Christian: Right, right. It's, it's a, it's a little unusual when you think about snakes.
Ellen: That's an interesting behavior. Cause usually when you think of them feeding, it's like they catch things and kill them and eat them. Like even when I worked at Petsmart, when we would feed the snakes, a lot of times the snakes you would have to move what you were feeding them because if it was just sitting there, they didn't want anything to do with it. It would be something you'd have to move around.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Interesting!
Christian: Yeah. They eat mostly fish and frogs, but they've been known to eat other small invertebrates and even other water moccasins.
Ellen: Go for it. Sure.
Christian: Which is pretty common in snakes. Another interesting their venom. So it's a Hematoxin.
Ellen: Okay. This is a blood poision?
Christian: Yeah so, so you might've seen something on youtube where someone takes a blood sample and puts this kind of venom in that sample and then it basically, it just coagulates.
Ellen: Ruins it. Destroys it.
Christian: So, so what this does when a human is bitten by this kind of snake is it does tissue destruction.
Ellen: Oh no...
Christian: Right. So it's not a, it's not a neurotoxin like some other snakes. So with, with this one though, human fatalities are rare. They happen though. But, um, the thing with tissue destruction at a really depends on where the bite is, can sometimes result in amputation if i's in a particular extremity and it progresses enough.
Christian: Earlier I mentioned about its aggression while- the cotton mouth is known to stand its ground. So if it feels threatened, a lot of snakes would run away. But the cottonmouth will usually stand its ground. It'll do that, uh, snake-esque pose, where it just kind of curls up...
Ellen: In an S-shape.
Christian: Yes, an S-shape. Um, and I'll, I'll come back to that a little bit in the next section, but while it will stand its ground, it's aggression is actually over exaggerated.
Ellen: Okay, so they're not going to like seek you out.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: They're not gonna try to fight you.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: They will though.
Christian: They'll, they'll go- they'll defend themselves, that's for sure.
Ellen: Yeah. They wish you would, they wish you would.
Christian: Um, oh, you know what, I kind of skipped over how big these things can get. So around 35 inches long. So now that that's over, that's almost three feet or for our metric listeners, that's 90 centimeters. And there's a little bit of dimorphism here, so the males tend to be larger than the females where the average weight for a male is around 20 ounces. For females, it's 9 ounces.
Ellen: You know, this is pretty small for such a dangerous snake.
Christian: So I think that's, that's kind of common with the venomous snakes. They're not usually too big, other than like the King Cobra, for example. But now these are just average sizes. They had been found to be much bigger, sometimes in very special circumstances.
Ellen: And they're plump too.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. So vipers are kind of known for their, their uh, thiccness. With two C's.
Ellen: Yeah. These are some chonks.
Christian: So a 10out of 10 for effectiveness, they kind of are the best at what they do.
Ellen: Yeah. Absolutely. Got the he game cornered.
Christian: Literally killing it.
Ellen: Aaaaaaah nice.
Christian: Ingenuity. I'm giving them a 7 out of 10. So earlier we talked about what they do when they feel threatened. So this is where its name cotton mouth comes from. When they feel threatened, they go into that pose, they look up at you and they just open their mouth and hiss, so the inside of their mouth is...
Ellen: Like a bright white.
Christian: Yeah. So it's, while the rest of their body is dark, sometimes almost entirely black, kind of depending on how old they are. But that's a, it's a stunning contrast between the white and the rest of their body. And then they're making that hissing sound. Also when they, in that situation, they tend to waggle, or wiggle the end of their tail.
Ellen: Cute.
Christian: So they do this when they're feeling threatened, but they also do that in a different context to lure frogs and other animals.
Ellen: Really!
Christian: Yeah. Uh, a lot of animals kind of do this thing. I think there are certain turtles that do something similar with their tongue or their tongue will have a small appendage that looks like a worm.
Ellen: Yes, yes, yes. This is a lure. This is a fishing lure. really.
Christian: Yup.
Ellen: So this is tool use out of their own... body.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah, so I figured it was appropriate to put this in ingenuity and give some points there.
Ellen: That is very cool.
Christian: Yeah. Uh, so yeah, the, they'll do that in two different contexts. One for luring prey and one for showing, you know, I mean business. Don't mess with me.
Ellen: I think for humans also, that like flash of white also just lets them know that the snake is there.
Christian: True.
Ellen: Because that dark color, it makes them really difficult to see, especially in the swampy, muddy ground and they're that dark brown color. So you probably won't see them. And then when they show you that bright white flash, you can see them and know to leave them alone.
Christian: Oh yeah. So, so yeah, these, these guys are found in wetlands, swamps, marshes, but also in Florida, you know, we have a lot of pine forests and other kinds of settings where there's a lot of, you know, leaves and other rotting plant matter.
Ellen: It's gross. It's gross.
Christian: But they're found in all of these places. Another point I'm getting them for ingenuity. They do this interesting thing in the dry season. So in the dry seasons, you know, bodies of water shrink. So that causes the concentration of fish to go up. So they have more fish in a given area. They make use of this time to just feed as much as they can.
Ellen: Excellent.
Ellen: So in the, in the wild, but they'll do with fish is though they usually corner them to, to first immobilize them and then they'll, they're surprisingly very good at striking underwater. There's, there's kind of a, a myth that they're not that good at striking while underwater, but that is not true. They are pretty good.
Ellen: They got it!
Ellen: They will attack and bite and then constrict. Constrict is more for just stopping movement, not so much the kill cause you know, they're, they're biting down and injecting their venom and waiting for that to take effect. So yeah, 7 out of 10 ingenuity.
Ellen: T...hat is very smarter than I thought a snake would be.
Christian: They're very good.
Ellen: Yeah. It's a good animal.
Ellen: And it, and it kind of... I'll talk about this a little later, but I think that the reason it's conservation is what it is, is because it's so good in its habitat. Aesthetics. Um, how much to look at, kind of gave it a 6 out of 10.
Ellen: Yeah.
Ellen: Okay. Uh, so when they're young, their colors are much lighter. They can be almost there almost brown when they're young and you can see kind of bands of darker coloration when they're younger, they actually get mistaken for copperheads. Yeah. They, they bear a somewhat resemblance there.
Ellen: There aren't very many defining characteristics just by looking at one that's just chilling there other than the context of like where it is other than when they're an adult. You can probably tell what you're looking at because of the shape of the head and the like, plumpness of the body and also just where it is. You can probably tell by context clues, but other than that it's just a snake.
Christian: Yup. So basically, you know, when, when they're older, it's almost entirely black body with a white mouth. Uh, the, the very tip of their tail is a little bit lighter. So a problem I have noticed in Florida personally is, you know, people will see a snake and they will automatically assume, oh, danger! Kill!
Ellen: Yes.
Ellen: Big problem. Yeah. So usually when you have a healthy snake population, that's a good sign. You know, they're, they're helping with the road in population, but a lot of people will assume dangerous snake and kill them. And a lot of the times the snake is not dangerous at all.
Ellen: Yeah. It could be like a corn snake and garden snake or, yeah.
Christian: You know, they're also killing the non dangerous snakes. Yeah. So the problem here is Florida in particular has a lot of snakes that could be mistaken for a cottonmouth. So like, like I alluded to, there are other water snakes but not venomous though a lot of people would assume, oh, dark colored snake in the water, cotton mouth, not always the case. You might have to have a little bit of experience with snakes to be able to tell the difference. But like, like you mentioned, you know the cotton mouth is a viper so it has that distinct head at where it's a broad head and it kind of ends in a snub nose.
Ellen: It sort of has these wide cheeks.
Ellen: Yeah.
Ellen: Has like wide cheeks but then a trapezoid face.
Christian: That's a good way to explain it. And they also have a distinct neck, which is... Which is not common in snakes. You know, sometimes you have a hard time distinguishing. Okay, where does the neck end and the body/tail end?
Ellen: Yeah, it's all neck. It's all neck, the whole thing is.
Christian: So, so in these though that they have, they do have a distinct neck, you can see where, you know, the head ends, the neck is thinner and then it gets bigger for their body because of that chonkiness.
Ellen: Which I find a little bit cute.
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
Ellen: It's a little bit cute. It has a little plop to it. I think it's cute.
Christian: One thing I found charming about their aesthetics is when they move, so both on land and swimming, they keep their head up at like a 45 degree angle.
Ellen: Aw! Keep your chin up, buddy!
Christian: I think it's very charming personally.
Ellen: That is kind of cute. They look like they're proud of themselves. They're like look at me! It's me your snake friend! Except not your friend. Please don't touch me.
Christian: Yeah, leave me alone. I just want to eat fish.
Ellen: Although, you know, sometimes you just have friends that want to be left alone and sometimes you have friends that you need to give them their space and they're still your friends.
Christian: So yeah, 6 out of 10 for aesthetics. So kind of going back there, we got a full 10 out of 10 for effectiveness, a 7 out of 10 for ingenuity and a 6 for aesthetics and it comes out to an average of 7.7 out of 10.
Ellen: Dang you really had a flex on my animal like that, but giving it a 0.4 bonus over mine.
Christian: Well, you know, arbitrary rating and whatnot.
Ellen: That's true.
Christian: So I mentioned their conservation status earlier. They are of least concern. So again, they're in the southeast United States. There are three subspecies. There's the eastern, the western and the Florida cotton mouth.
Ellen: Oh, we have our own one! This is just like the manatee! We have our own one, we're so special.
Christian: That's right! So they're very good at what they do. Um, some of the dangers that they have to face: humans killing them, like I mentioned, but also drainage of wetlands.
Ellen: Yeah....
Christian: But even despite that least concern, not having any kind of problem, there are areas near the furthest outreaches of their territory where they're considered endangered. So this is kind of like northern Georgiaall the way out to Texas almost, but in the deep south here with us, they're pretty much fine.
Ellen: Cool.
Christian: So, and I kind of touched on how many names they have. So for me it's always been water moccasin or cotton mouth, but I kind of did a little research. Um, they have, or at least on Wikipedia, they list over 60 different names.
Ellen: Hey y'all, that's too many. Hey, that's too many. Can we agree on one?
Christian: So that, that little tail thing they do, that has led to some names such as swamp rattler....
Ellen: Swamp rattler... Okay...
Christian: So of course it makes people think of how rattlesnakes will do something similar, but you know, they have something that will make a sound when they do it.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: Rusty moccasin... And you started seeing combinations of these words, like cotton mouth rattler, it's just a whole list of different names.
Ellen: They're not really a rattler, they're more of a Wiggler. Can we call him a swamp... Swamp wiggler? That's a tongue twister though. Swamp wiggler. You try it. Swamp wiggler...
Christian: Swamp... Riggler.
Ellen: Yeah. It's hard, isn't it?
Christian: All sorts of things, swamp lion, trap jaw...
Ellen: Swamp lion?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: That's not even close.
Christian: I don't know.
Ellen: Not even close! It's not that at all.
Christian: Yeah. So lots of names for the same snake.
Ellen: Wel,l I have known them as a water moccasin. So as far as I know in this area, I think that's the more common name for them.
Christian: Yep, it's definitely a regional thing.
Ellen: Yeah. But I do know a lot of people who refer to them as cotton mouths. I have actually overheard an argument between two people. I was at like a zoo or something like that, and I heard two people arguing, they were looking at a water moccasin and they were arguing with each other because one of them insisted it was a water moccasin and the other one adamantly refused and said "absolutely not, I know for a fact that as a cotton mouth." And they were like about to throw bows over it. These people were like about to pop.
Christian: I'm imagining the Spiderman meme where they're pointing at each other.
Ellen: Yeah that was exactly what it was. And so it was just very amusing to me that they were like about to get into a fist fight over whether it was a water moccasin or a cotton mouth.
Christian: Yup. Yup. So another beloved Florida animal.
Ellen: Yeah, this is an icon for us and another reason we've already talked about the alligator, and this is just one of the other reasons why I don't go into open water here, and you shouldn't either. If you're visiting Florida, please don't go into the water anywhere.
Christian: I mean, we're here for a good time...
Ellen: Not a long time. The beach is normally fine, but like I just said, we've got these little ocean ninjas, the blue dragons that sometimes wash up on our shores too, so you're really not safe anywhere. Some people have referred to Florida as the Australia of the United States because everything here can kill you.
Christian: I feel like that's over exaggerated. I mean Australia has those trees, right where the trees that can kill you.
Ellen: Yeah, we have elaborate defense systems.
Christian: My worst enemy is the sun personally.
Ellen: You're not safe anywhere! All right, that's all we got for today, but like I said earlier, we're now doing listeners submissions. If you have an animal species that you really want to hear us talk about, you can submit it to us by emailing it to us at the zoo of us. That is all one word, thezooofus@gmail.com send us your animal species, send us your best friends and we will talk about them on the show and if we use your submission we will give you a shout out. You can also connect with us on social media now, we're on Twitter, we're on Facebook. Another new thing that we're rolling out is transcripts. A transcript of this episode and episode 4 can be found at justthezooofus.home.blog so if you have people you want to recommend the show to that are deaf or hard of hearing or maybe they just prefer to read rather than listen, they can find those transcripts at justthezooofus.home.blog. I'd also like to thank Louie Zong for the use of his song "Adventuring" from his album Bee Sides, we use it as our intro and outro music and we love it very much.
Christian: It's very good.
Ellen: Yeah. Excellent. All right, that's all we've got for you today, so thank you for joining us. Thank you for your time, thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.
Christian: Thanks everyone!
Ellen: Thank you! Byeeee!