How Facebook Is Saving Snakes

When Allison Baker moved to what she calls “snake heaven,” a home on 2.5 acres just outside of Dallas–Fort Worth, Tex., her greatest fear was a dangerous encounter between her young children and one of heaven’s residents. Baker’s anxiety was understandable. After all, Texas is one of the snakiest states in the nation, with more than 80 species, 11 of them venomous. And the previous homeowners had found venomous snakes on the property, including a cottonmouth coiled by the pool. It wasn’t long before she had her own run-ins with the slithering creatures—including a bite she received from a copperhead while doing yardwork.

Yet despite her initial trepidation, Baker, 44, has undergone an attitude change since moving into the new place. “I knew better than to dig in a pile of leaves,” she says of her brush with the copperhead. “I didn’t blame the snake for it and got a shovel and flipped the snake out of there,” relocating the animal rather than dispatching it. Although most people would probably have gone to the emergency room, Baker’s bite happened mid-pandemic. So after a telehealth consult, she took some antihistamine and rode out the fairly mild symptoms she experienced. “It’s okay,” she says casually. “I have a scar.”

What force could drive such a dramatic shift in perspective? Baker credits, of all things, a Facebook group, one whose mission it is to educate members about snakes. Although the social media giant has a bad reputation for doing everything wrong in public health and politics, it turns out to be a powerful tool for saving snake lives. It’s not just Facebook. Wildlife enthusiasts are co-opting various social media platforms to build communities that promote accurate snake information and slay viral myths. Through these efforts they are converting even the most committed snake haters into ardent snake appreciators whose newfound regard for these misunderstood creatures often spreads to family, friends and neighbors. One by one, the snakes are living to slither another day.

Fear Factor

It was chickens that led Baker to the snake ID groups. Having chickens “couldn’t be a more down-home, country, just warm feeling, so domestic and wonderful until you open the doors and there’s a five-foot rat snake with an egg down it,” she says. “That domestic warm feeling immediately evaporates into pure panic.” A common reaction people have on encountering a snake is to kill it—regardless of whether it actually poses a threat. Wondering if there was another way, Baker turned to Facebook.

What kind of snake is this? North Texas Educational Group” in 2013 after years of trying more conventional snake-conservation outreach. Pyle, 48, lives in Hood County, Texas, and is the current president of the Dallas–Fort Worth Herpetological Society. In his earlier outreach efforts, he never felt like he was getting any traction “because you only have a few moments with each person.” Pyle really wanted to help people more than snakes. “If you can help people with some knowledge about a subject, the conservation end of it takes care of itself,” he says. “You can’t care about or love something you don’t know the first thing about.”

Whereas other social media ID groups encompass huge areas, from entire continents to the entire planet, Pyle went local, focusing on the snakes he’s most familiar with. That way, he reasoned, “I can actually help if someone has a snake in their backyard.” He hoped his regional approach would serve as a template for other local efforts.

Today Pyle’s group has more than 176,000 members eagerly exchanging information about the region’s venomous rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths and coral snakes, as well as its nonvenomous rat snakes and water snakes, among other harmless species. “This group has been the first time in my life that I think I’m making a real difference,” he says. Other regional groups that have formed include a statewide Texas ID and Central Texas Snake ID, which has more than 43,000 members and is run by a snake-relocation service near San Antonio. Facebook features dozens of other groups, too, mostly in the southern and southwestern states where most snakes live, covering regions as niche as Southside Atlanta.

Building Community

The premise of the groups is simple. A member uploads an image of a snake they want identified, and within minutes an expert administrator responds. One unbreakable rule of the pages is that users have to keep their guesses to themselves. Only IDs made with certainty are allowed. For Pyle, this rule is so crucial that he once muted his own daughter for guessing. It can be a matter of safety, especially if someone says a snake is nonvenomous when it isn’t.

Admins may be snake experts, like Pyle, or amateur “snake nerds.” Jon Farris, 38, a quality-control manager in Waco, Tex., helps to oversee the Central Texas Snake ID group. His knowledge of snakes is all self-taught—“I’ve always liked them,” he says—and after a few years of establishing his bona fides with accurate IDs on the boards, he eventually became an administrator. He spends a lot of time helping panicked newcomers, who tend to think every snake they come across is a cottonmouth that they need to kill. Usually it’s a case of mistaken identity, and what they have instead is one of the nonvenomous water snakes. The distinction, long-term members of these groups can tell you, is that a diamondback water snake, or DBWS (Nerodia rhombifer, nonvenomous) in their parlance, has vertical lines on the upper jaw and close-set eyes, giving it an appearance that superfans lovingly describe as “goofy.” Cottonmouths (Agkistrodon piscivorus, venomous), in contrast, have hooded eyes on the sides of their heads and no vertical upper jaw lines. They definitely do not look “goofy.”

Western Rat Snake (Panthero phis obsoletus) poses no threat to humans but is commonly confused with the venomous cottonmouth. Credit: Jeff Wilson

*Editor’s Note (8/19/22): This caption was edited after posting to include additional information about the copperhead shown in the image.

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