The Science Behind Dogs Sensing Snakes
One of your best bets for your dog keeping snakes away is banking on the fact that they can sense a snake – which mostly falls onto their hearing and smelling. All kind of reptiles, snakes especially, will give off a particular scent, and depending on the type of snake, it may or may not be particularly strong.
Snakes have cloacal glands situated on their tails, and when they open these glands and vent them, theyre able to manufacture a pretty smelly smell. This happens when snakes are bothered, threatened, or scared – all emotions they can feel from a dogs presence. Snakes will rub this scent off on their enemies or surrounding areas, giving your pup opportunity to sense snakes and keep you, and themselves, away from them.
Snakes don’t like to get in the way of dogs, the reason being that dogs are louder, bigger, and more annoying than a good snack. If your dog is present in an area, the chances are high that snakes will stay away. However, if you accidentally enter an area that is full of snakes, there are ways to train your dog to avoid snakes.
In the summer season, when the days get longer and the temperature starts to rise, there are different things that pet owners do to keep their puppies safe and healthy. One of the biggest problems Australian pet owners will face is snakes. Many cases of snake bites in pets have been reported throughout the year.
Clove and cinnamon oil is famous and effective snake repellants. You can use them by mixing them and spraying them directly on the snake.
When the spring season rolls around, and the temperature rises, the snakes wake up from their long nap. That is why it is important to protect your gardens by taking the following measures.
Snakes usually try to avoid humans, but if a snake gets in their way, it’s best to keep your dog away from them. Dogs basically have natural hunting instincts, so when they see snakes, they chase after them.
Dogs lack of fear might explain why theyre so at risk of life-threatening snakebites. Photo Credit: Nantawit Chuchue/Shutterstock If you feel your stomach flutter uncomfortably at the mere of a slithering serpent, youre not alone. Its thought that snakes make about half of us anxious, and 2-3% of people are Ophidiophobic—that is, theyre deeply afraid of snakes. Such fear is thought to have deep roots; over the course of our evolutionary history, snakes are thought to have had such an influence on our risk of dying that weve evolved an innate fear of them, which has even influenced our visual acuity—an idea known as the Snake Detection Hypothesis. Whether we all really share an innate terror of snakes is still somewhat controversial, but the case is much clearer in dogs: our beloved canine companions simply arent afraid of snakes, and thats probably part of the reason so dang many of them wind up in veterinary ERs for envenomations. The newest evidence comes from a paper in Applied Animal Behavior Science, which found that dogs can smell the difference between a venomous rattlesnake and a harmless boa, but they find the smell intriguing rather than terrifying. And that means theyre more likely to investigate, putting themselves at risk of a dangerous bite. The researchers presented 171 dogs with bits of newspapers coated with the scents of southern Pacific rattlesnakes (Crotalus oreganus helleri), rosy boas (Lichanura trivirgata), mice (Mus musculus) or snails (Cornu aspersum), and recorded both how long the dogs sniffed them and what nostril they used to sniff with, as previous studies have found correlations between the nostril dogs use for smelling and fear.
If wolves dont fear snake odors, that may suggest a lack of evolutionary importance of snakebite—or that the snakes have evolved a way of hiding their scent. Photo Credit: Holly Kuchera/Shutterstock If the wolves arent afraid, that could mean that snakes just arent a big threat. Or, it could be that the snake species tested may have actually evolved to smell less threatening—an idea the researchers refer to as “chemical crypsis.” And theres some evidence for that—one 2015 study found that dogs could be only be trained to tell some snake species scents apart. The one in particular that gave them trouble was the puff adder, which—like southern Pacific rattlesnakes—is an ambush predator. A sit-and-strike hunting style wouldnt be too effective if your potential prey could smell you from a meter away, so it makes sense that these animals might have evolved a less identifiable odor (alternatively, snakes that dont move as much might just not produce as much smell). Either way, it seems pretty clear that dogs—even ones that have encountered or been bitten by rattlesnakes—dont really fear the toxic serpents. And thats unfortunate, because its estimated that ~150,000 pets are bitten by rattlesnakes each year, and those bites are way more dangerous for them than they are for us. While North American snakebites are fatal less than 1% of the time in people, researchers estimate up to 30% of bitten dogs die from the experience. So as the summer approaches, be sure to keep a good eye on your pups as they explore the outdoors! Because the old adage about curiosity killing doesnt just apply to cats, and if anything, evolution seems to be working against dogs when it comes to the dangers posed by venomous snakes.
Studies suggest dogs sniff scary things with their right nostril. Photo Credit: Robin D. Williams/Shutterstock Only the odor of mice was as interesting to the dogs as Eau de rattlesnake; they sniffed the rattlesnake papers significantly more than the ones smelling of boa or snail. But while they did that, there was no bias in the nostril used, even by animals that had been bitten by a rattlesnake before, which suggested the animals were interested but not afraid—or, as the authors phrased it, that they exhibited “investigatory interest without an accompanying experience of threat.” Thats similar to what a 1989 study concluded, and the authors suggest it “would help explain the anecdotal evidence that dogs are prone to approach and thus be bitten by rattlesnakes.” In addition to owner stories, studies have found that most dogs bitten by rattlesnakes receive strikes to the face or neck, suggesting they approached the snake that bit them head on. But why dogs dont share our fear is less clear. Its not like they evolved apart from dangerous snakes—”Canids evolved in the presence of constricting and venomous snakes,” the authors noted, “and their olfactory systems are extremely sensitive, making odors particularly well-suited to mediate threat detection.” Of course, the presence of snakes doesnt mean that they are, or have always been, a significant danger. The authors note that if snakes werent really a big threat to dogs or the wolves they evolved from, then there wouldnt have been a strong selection pressure to drive the evolution of an innate fear. Theyd like to see if wolves behave the same way as the dogs they tested, to better gauge whether the lineage as a whole just doesnt really fear venomous snakes or if weve somehow bred the fear of snakes out of dogs during the process of domestication.