Episode 242: Snakes with Nose Horns
b'Sign up for our mailing list! We also have t-shirts and mugs with our logo!\\n\\nCheck out our Kickstarter pre-launch page!!\\n\\nThanks to Max for suggesting the rhinoceros viper! We\'ll learn about that one and several other snakes with nose horns this week.\\n\\nThe rhino viper, AKA the butterfly viper because of its beautiful colors and pattern:\\n\\n \\n\\nThe rhino viper has nose horns (photo by Bal\\xe1zs Buz\\xe1s):\\n\\n\\n\\nThe West African Gaboon viper (Bitis rhinoceros), AKA the other rhino viper:\\n\\n \\n\\nThe rhinoceros snake, AKA the Vietnamese longnose snake (photo taken by me! That\'s why it\'s kind of blurry!):\\n\\n\\n\\nThe nose-horned viper is a beautiful snake:\\n\\n \\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nJust a reminder about our Kickstarter for the Strange Animals Podcast book! Check the show notes for a link if you want to look at the preliminary cover and maybe bookmark the page for when we go live in just two weeks!!\\n\\nThis week we\\u2019ll learn about the rhino viper, which was suggested by Max, who at the time was almost eight years old but that was so long ago I bet Max is eight now or maybe nine or ten. Maybe thirty.\\n\\nThe rhinoceros viper lives in forests in parts of western and central Africa, and can grow three and a half feet long, or 107 cm. It\\u2019s a heavy chonk of a snake but it\\u2019s beautifully colored, with big triangular blotches and smaller markings of red, yellow, black, and blue or green. If you look at one on a white background it stands out, but on the forest floor where it lives, with dead leaves and plants all around, it blends right in. It has rough scales that make it look bristly, called keeled scales. The rhino viper\\u2019s scales are so strongly keeled that they can cut your hand if you pet it. It\\u2019s not a good idea to pet wild snakes anyway.\\n\\nThe rhino viper\\u2019s scientific name is Bitis nasicornis. At first I thought it was pronounced like \\u201cbite us,\\u201d which I thought was hilarious, and I was disappointed to find that it\\u2019s pronounced \\u201cbit-us,\\u201d although that\\u2019s actually funny too. Actually it\'s pronounced "bit-is." It\\u2019s spelled B-I-T-I-S. Nasicornis means nose horn, and it definitely has horns on its nose. It has a pair of horns, in fact, side by side, and they stick up and slightly forward. Some rhino vipers even have three nose horns. They\\u2019re not true horns, though. Instead they\\u2019re made of modified scales. They\\u2019re bendy like scales too.\\n\\nThe rhino viper mostly eats rodents but will also eat frogs, birds, and other small animals if it can catch them. It\\u2019s an ambush hunter, meaning it hides among fallen leaves and waits for an animal to come too close. Most of the time it moves slowly, but when it strikes, it does so very quickly, in less than a quarter of a second. It has relatively mild venom, although some other Bitis species have venom that\\u2019s deadly to humans.\\n\\nThe rhino viper spends most of its time on the ground, but it can climb trees if it wants to. The end of its blunt tail is even partially prehensile, meaning it can curl around branches to help it hang on. This is the closest thing to a hand that snakes have. It can also swim well.\\n\\nSometimes the rhino viper is called the butterfly viper because of its colorful markings, and to stop people from confusing it with another closely related snake called Bitis rhinoceros. Rhinoceros also means nose-horn, by the way. B. rhinoceros is also called the West African Gaboon viper because it lives in West Africa. It looks similar to the other rhino viper with a similar pattern but in more neutral tones of brown and tan. It\\u2019s sort of a more sophisticated-looking rhino viper. It also has a pair of nose horns but they\\u2019re smaller and generally point up and slightly back.\\n\\nAll snakes in the genus Bitis have a threat display that has earned them the name puff adder, although that\\u2019s also the name of a specific species, Bitis arietans, that\\u2019s extremely venomous. Some people call the various species of hognose snake found in ...'