They think they’re being sea-blocked.
Perhaps few things would induce panic more than getting approached by a highly venomous serpent while underwater. However, Australian scientists urge divers not to be alarmed: Sea snakes apparently mean us no ill will and are probably just trying to — wait for it — mate with us.
According to a slithery study by researchers at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, sea snake “attacks” on humans apparently “result from mistaken identity during sexual interactions.” The frisky findings, published Thursday in the Scientific Reports journal, are based on insights accumulated by researcher Tim Lynch during his 158 encounters with the highly toxic olive sea snakes while diving in the Great Barrier Reef.
While Lynch conducted the underwater fact-finding missions in the mid-1990s, he didn’t get the chance to publish his discoveries until the coronavirus pandemic hit last year.
“You can blame COVID for this,” said Richard Shine, a professor of biology at Macquarie University who helped turn Lynch’s salacious serpent thesis into a bona fide science paper, Vice reported.
The resulting dissertation, dubbed “the first quantitative evidence on sea snake ‘attacks,’” argues that incidents of unprovoked aggression on humans were actually “misdirected courtship responses,” as they almost always occurred during the winter breeding season from May to August. They also disproportionately involved male snakes, who, during these encounters, would exhibit “courtship” behaviors such as coiling around a diver’s arm.
Or, as Shine told the New York Times, “it’s just a lovesick boy looking for a girlfriend and making a rather foolish mistake.”
The study authors wrote that the “agitated rapid approaches by males, easily interpreted as ‘attacks,’ often occurred after a courting male lost contact with a female he was pursuing, after interactions between rival males, or when a diver tried to flee from a male.” They added that the latter instance “may inadvertently mimic the responses of female snakes to courtship, encouraging males to give chase.”
Those patterns seemed to indicate that the randy reptiles were mistaking divers for either a potential mate or a rival male.
Otherwise, “why would a free-ranging snake approach and bite a person that has not harassed it, is too large to be a prey item, and could readily be evaded in the complex three-dimensional world of a coral reef?” the researchers asked, noting that the slitherers would prefer to flee than confront a much larger human.
The idea of a sea snake mistaking a diver for a scaly soul mate still might sound ridiculous. However, the paper argues that sea snakes’ eyesight is a lot poorer than their land-dwelling brethren, which would explain the rare instances of female snakes approaching divers. They were frequently trying to escape their potential male suitors and had mistaken a human for a coral formation they could hide behind.
In order to avoid attacks by spurned male snakes, the researchers encouraged divers to “keep still and avoid retaliation.
“The best strategy for divers in such a situation may be to allow the snake to investigate them and in particular to allow for the snake to investigate chemical cues with its tongue,” the team wrote in the study. “Attempting to flee is likely to be futile and may even increase the ardour of the pursuit; and attempting to drive the animal away may induce retaliation.”
In other words, don’t play hard to get.
Thankfully, despite some species packing enough venom to kill three people with one bite, sea snake bites are exceedingly rare, as “by and large they are very gentle animals,” Aussie venom expert Dr. Bryan Fry told Forbes.
In fact, Australia — whose northern coastline alone boasts more than 32 species of sea snakes — has only recorded one death from a sea serpent bite in the last 80 years, Athe Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported. This shocking 2018 incident involved a 23-year-old UK fisherman who was bitten by a banded sea krait that got tangled in a shrimp net off northeast Australia.
Of course, sea snakes aren’t the only serpents that get ornery when they’re horny. A New Jersey man was bitten by a copperhead snake during its breeding season earlier this month, at a time when the animals are more aggressive.