Phobia busting – Ophidiophobia – the fear of snakes is not a totally irrational fear as there are some snakes in the wild that are venomous. Most snakes in the wild wish to defend themselves when frightened by a huge predatory animal which includes humans, constrictors can only hiss and strike out but venomous snakes can inject their venom into the predator and sometimes it can be fatal.
Quite a few venomous snakes advertise the fact: they have bright colouring, rattle their tails or have hoods like the cobra, sadly many modern day humans don’t look carefully for these signs or ignore them at their peril.
I find it strange though that adults are afraid even when tiny tots are handling the snakes from the sanctuary in front of their very eyes, that they still don’t bring their brain into conscious reasoning.
Recently a tiny tot was holding the different snakes and loving them so much until one of the snakes faces went towards to the nursery assistants face as she was holding the tot and she screamed frightening the little boy and making him cry, he may have a fear of snakes forever more after that incident, instead of a fear of nursery assistants!!
At the beginning of February a woman called Sarah decided she would attempt to lose her fear of snakes and came to the sanctuary to meet me and the snakes. She said that coming up on the train she felt very apprehensive. When she arrived I asked her how frightened she was as some people cannot look at snakes on the TV or even photos of snakes, but she didn’t mind whilst the snakes were in their vivariums so I took her into the coach house where the snakes live.
At first I taught her a about snakes and their senses, it’s important to know how snakes sense their world to understand them: it goes a bit like this, no arms, no legs, no feet, no hands, no ears, bad eyesight (some snakes do have better eyesight than others, in particular snakes that hunt in the daytime), can’t wear glasses because they have no ears 🙂 – they hear to an extent through their hearing bones which connect to hearing canals and they pick up sound through their skin, they sense vibration in particular they seem to me to pick up on a persons energy.
They can sense the heat around your body with their heat sensors which are situated around the top lip between the nostrils so can work out the size of prey which makes them smart enough not to attempt to eat something the wrong size.
Here is a brilliant resource http://www.szgdocent.org/resource/rr/c-eat.htm if you would like to learn more about snakes and their physiology.
Sarah brought a friend Matt who was not afraid of snake so I began by allowing Matt to hold one or two of my baby Kenyan Sand Boas, I have their Sisters who are 11 yrs old and their Mum and Dad. I bred some more of these snakes because they are small chubby and don’t move too quickly which makes them ideal to start any presentation as they do not appear scary in any way, people even immediately think they look cute.
Below are some photos of Sarah and how she moved on from being afraid to totally overcoming her fear and even enjoying holding a Boa Constrictor.
The session was very successful and Sarah even realised how therapeutic snakes can be.
