Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippines

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Hans Breuer (twoton)
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Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippines

Post by Hans Breuer (twoton) »

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1213-hanc ... luzon.html

Very interesting! I wonder if there are any similar info about the interaction between retics and the Penan, the hunter-gatherers here in Sarawak....
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Scott Waters »

As seen in a Herp Nation Blog (click on image).....

Image
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Hans Breuer (twoton) »

Thanks!
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Warren
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Warren »

I thought it was solid evidence for an instinctive primate predisposition to fear of snakes. Can we lay the discussion to rest now?

*DANGER: NOT SNAKE-RELATED*

I asked my Filipino friend about the Aeta yesterday. When Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it killed off about half their population. They are one of the most primitive aboriginals, predating the Han invasion. These primitive tribes suffer doubly: first, from the government because they receive no protection (possibly because nothing is protected there, but also possibly because they have been invaded four or five times, whereas our aboriginals were only invaded once), and second, from tourists because the Aeta are a stone-age people who don't weave fancy colourful clothes, make elaborate bead necklaces, or produce operas and Hollywood blockbusters; i.e. the things that more advanced tribes get up to when their basic needs are met. So the tourists flock to other peoples like the tribes in Mindanao.
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TNWJackson
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by TNWJackson »

Very interesting article, although the skeptic in me immediately questions what percentage of the "attacks" are actually snakes looking for a feed and what percentage are defensive bites (which may also produce "scars to prove it").

Obviously the Agta Negritos are a special case because of their small adult size. In general I don't think even the largest pythons (which are themselves exceptionally rare due to predation) would be capable of swallowing an adult man. I think the innate fear of snakes that many humans exhibit probably has more to do with venomous snakes, which continue to kill over 100 thousand people a year, than it does with pythons, which have probably never killed large numbers of people.
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Correcamino
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Correcamino »

Very interesting. Dave Barker talked about this in his article on retic in Reptiles magazine many years ago. Apparemntly the front teeth of a retic have a knife shaped cross section and can deliver a slashing bite (I can attest to this, lol) Dave found a surprising number of local who had been attacked and a strong correlation of slashing bites to the rear of the thigh both in humans and other prey animals. He felt that severing the femoral artery might well be a part of the retic predation method, the facial pits also serving to show hot zones where ateries were located.

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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Bob »

TNWJackson wrote:Very interesting article, although the skeptic in me immediately questions what percentage of the "attacks" are actually snakes looking for a feed and what percentage are defensive bites (which may also produce "scars to prove it").

Obviously the Agta Negritos are a special case because of their small adult size. In general I don't think even the largest pythons (which are themselves exceptionally rare due to predation) would be capable of swallowing an adult man. I think the innate fear of snakes that many humans exhibit probably has more to do with venomous snakes, which continue to kill over 100 thousand people a year, than it does with pythons, which have probably never killed large numbers of people.
I think pythons could well have been a much larger risk to humans in the past, their numbers and average size being greatly reduced across much of their ranges. I doubt the python in the picture would have any trouble swallowing either of the two men holding it, but I suspect that many a man has been wrapped and killed over the centuries and not eaten if the snake was not able to swallow it.

Not just deaths, in India alone there are about 1 million serious bites and over 50 thousand deaths and rising. I have read that in Africa over 1.5 million bites are reported each year with fewer than 12% being treated properly, and certainly many more cases go unreported given the nature of the continent.
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Dusty Rhoads »

TNWJackson wrote:Very interesting article, although the skeptic in me immediately questions what percentage of the "attacks" are actually snakes looking for a feed and what percentage are defensive bites (which may also produce "scars to prove it").

Obviously the Agta Negritos are a special case because of their small adult size. In general I don't think even the largest pythons (which are themselves exceptionally rare due to predation) would be capable of swallowing an adult man. I think the innate fear of snakes that many humans exhibit probably has more to do with venomous snakes, which continue to kill over 100 thousand people a year, than it does with pythons, which have probably never killed large numbers of people.
I would certainly recommend to anyone that they read the original paper in PNAS Plus, not just the blogs and comments. The methods the authors used demonstrate — and their subsequent findings give — a good amount of confidence that these were offensive attacks by the pythons, not merely defensive ones.
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Bryan Hamilton »

Dusty Rhoads wrote: I would certainly recommend to anyone that they read the original paper in PNAS Plus, not just the blogs and comments. The methods the authors used demonstrate — and their subsequent findings give — a good amount of confidence that these were offensive attacks by the pythons, not merely defensive ones.
Hi Dusty,

Do you have pdf of the paper that you would be willing to share?
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Dusty Rhoads »

Bryan Hamilton wrote: Hi Dusty,

Do you have pdf of the paper that you would be willing to share?
Hey yeah, e-mail me ddrhoads(at)olemiss(dot)edu, and I'll be happy to forward it on.
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by TNWJackson »

I'll definitely read the paper, I'm not criticising its conclusions (I can't, as I haven't read it yet :lol:), just saying that I'm always skeptical of snake "attacks". As I said though, the Agta Negritos are obviously small people, which would increase their chances of being attacked and possibly eaten.

Bob, there are several reasons I don't think pythons compare to venomous snakes in terms of being a "cause" of the "innate fear" that people have of snakes. I don't believe genuinely huge pythons have ever been common, but certainly in the past they would have been far more common than they are now. They would never have rivaled venomous snakes in terms of abundance though. Additionally, giant constrictors only occur (and only ever have occurred, in human times) in a few parts of the world. Obviously retics get genuinely huge, but they are restricted to Southeast Asia - no part of the evolutionary history of the majority of humans occurred in Southeast Asia. If we consider Africa, "birthplace of humanity", there is also a large python species there, but it is considerably smaller than the reticulated python and would only be capable of feeding on a very small person (we're also not all descended from pygmies). On the other hand, Africa is chock full of venomous snakes that are more than capable of killing humans, even with "modern" medical care. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, a bite from a puff adder (or insert a dozen other venomous African species here) that resulted in envenomation would have been a death sentence. As it says in this article, even in many cases where humans were grabbed by pythons, the humans managed to escape by killing the snake. Hence, the relative danger to our ancestors posed by venomous snakes was considerably larger than that posed by pythons.

Now, of course, there is also the suggestion that our "innate fear" of snakes predates (no pun intended) our species and is something we've inherited from a far distant ancestor that was much smaller than a modern human and was regularly preyed upon by constrictors.
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Bob »

TNWJackson wrote:I'll definitely read the paper, I'm not criticising its conclusions (I can't, as I haven't read it yet :lol:), just saying that I'm always skeptical of snake "attacks". As I said though, the Agta Negritos are obviously small people, which would increase their chances of being attacked and possibly eaten.

Bob, there are several reasons I don't think pythons compare to venomous snakes in terms of being a "cause" of the "innate fear" that people have of snakes. I don't believe genuinely huge pythons have ever been common, but certainly in the past they would have been far more common than they are now. They would never have rivaled venomous snakes in terms of abundance though. Additionally, giant constrictors only occur (and only ever have occurred, in human times) in a few parts of the world. Obviously retics get genuinely huge, but they are restricted to Southeast Asia - no part of the evolutionary history of the majority of humans occurred in Southeast Asia. If we consider Africa, "birthplace of humanity", there is also a large python species there, but it is considerably smaller than the reticulated python and would only be capable of feeding on a very small person (we're also not all descended from pygmies). On the other hand, Africa is chock full of venomous snakes that are more than capable of killing humans, even with "modern" medical care. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, a bite from a puff adder (or insert a dozen other venomous African species here) that resulted in envenomation would have been a death sentence. As it says in this article, even in many cases where humans were grabbed by pythons, the humans managed to escape by killing the snake. Hence, the relative danger to our ancestors posed by venomous snakes was considerably larger than that posed by pythons.

Now, of course, there is also the suggestion that our "innate fear" of snakes predates (no pun intended) our species and is something we've inherited from a far distant ancestor that was much smaller than a modern human and was regularly preyed upon by constrictors.
I agree that pythons specifically may not have, but I feel that any innate fear could be caused by any snakes thus the evolution of mimics perhaps? Certainly chimps do not distinguish between species. I'm no geneticist, but I do suspect that 'fear' genes for lack of a better word but along the lines of the 'warrior gene' (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 0121093343) could be passed down from our ancestral primate forefathers.

But my point was more along the lines that we have caused a significant reduction in the population of large pythons as well as the average size, and attacks on humans were certainly much more common 100 or 1000 years ago. Certainly those that hunted them for food would be wary based on experience just as they would if hunting wild boar.
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by M Wolverton »

Big pythons are an easy large amount of meat for hunter/gatherers, in some regions the python can be the largest food package. They don't require any special hunting equipment, chase, or any really labor intensive processing. They are far more the prey for humans than they are the predator.

I also don't see any reason to believe pythons averaged larger sizes or were more plentiful as long as hunter/gatherers lived in the same region. People would have put pressure on the population, in a lot of cases more so than now.
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Bryan Hamilton »

M Wolverton wrote:I also don't see any reason to believe pythons averaged larger sizes or were more plentiful as long as hunter/gatherers lived in the same region. People would have put pressure on the population, in a lot of cases more so than now.
I tend to disagree with this simply because there are so many more humans now and so much less habitat.
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Re: Pythons commonly attacked hunter-gatherers in Philippine

Post by Bob »

Bryan Hamilton wrote:
M Wolverton wrote:I also don't see any reason to believe pythons averaged larger sizes or were more plentiful as long as hunter/gatherers lived in the same region. People would have put pressure on the population, in a lot of cases more so than now.
I tend to disagree with this simply because there are so many more humans now and so much less habitat.
Indeed, many are killed on sight, many DOR, agriculture keeps infringing into habitat. They just do not get the chance to live out their natural life span.
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