This episode is sponsored by Ground News.

Contrary to what the internet  would have you believe, not everything in Australia wants to kill you. Wombats just want to be left alone to dig their holes and poop their cubic poop.

Turtle frogs just want to be left alone to dig their holes and eat termites. And platypuses… well, you get the idea. Though, to be fair, a whole lot of very dangerous animals do live in Australia,   from spiders to crocodiles.

That list also includes a sizable share of the world’s deadliest snakes. But, as frightening as their venom may be, plenty of those snakes have a much softer side than their reputation lets on. In fact, a few of them are downright cuddly.

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Australia is home to 25 species of dangerously venomous snakes. Which may seem like a lot… until you realize that those 25 are out of  almost 200 species of Australian snakes. And sure, “more than 12 percent” may feel  like too many deadly snakes for comfort,   but it’s still a far cry from the imagined  every single thing in Australia trope.

Even the term “deadly,” as a common label for many of the snakes in question is painting them with too broad a brush. Their bite may pack a punch, but that’s not all there is to them. For example, they reproduce in basically  all of the different ways vertebrates can.

Take the common tree snake,  Dendrelaphis punctulatus. This non-venomous cutie grows to almost 2  meters long and can be found in tropical   forests all around eastern and northern Australia. Tree snakes are oviparous, meaning that they lay  eggs. We can think of these guys as our basic,   baseline snake, because things  only get weirder from here.

The Eastern brown snake, Pseudonaja  textilis, is about 1.5 meters long on   average, and can be found all over the  eastern part of Australia and beyond. This snake is venomous, and that fact combined  with how often they interact with people means   that Eastern browns cause more human  deaths than any other Australian snake.

But again, let’s not harp on  the lurid “killing you” aspect. What about their reproduction? The part where they make more alive things? Like tree snakes, Eastern brown snakes are  oviparous, but they have a bonus ability: rather than immediately laying  fertilized eggs after mating,   females can store sperm for multiple weeks. So if egg-laying conditions aren’t  quite to their liking when they mate,   they can wait up to two months  for the ideal opportunity.

The curl snake, Suta suta, a venomous species that  we totally didn’t include just for its great name,   averages only about 40 centimeters long  and shows up all over mainland Australia. But unlike our first two species,  the curl snake is viviparous,   meaning that instead of laying eggs,  it gives birth to live offspring. As much as we might think that mammals have cornered the market on live birth,   it’s actually a reproductive  strategy that has evolved many, many times independently in  animals of a scalier persuasion.

And that brings us to the red-bellied  black snake, Pseudechis porphyriacus. At 1.5 to 2.5 meters in length and showing  up in wet habitats near humans all over Australia’s east coast, you might think that  this venomous snake would be quite a threat. But red-bellied black snakes are far more likely  to flee or freeze than they are to attack.

What really sets this species apart, even from other snakes in its own  genus, is that it’s oviparous. As the term might suggest, it’s basically  halfway between being oviparous and viviparous. Females produce eggs that they don’t actually lay, instead allowing them to hatch internally. Then, they give birth to the resulting live young.

And lastly, to round out our snake  sample pack are the coastal taipan,   Oxyuranus scutellatus, and the  inland taipan, O. microlepidotus. Both species are so venomous, to the  point where the name “taipan” is more   or less synonymous with the whole “lethal  Australia” premise that we’re unpacking here. I mean, another name for the  inland taipan is literally just the “fierce snake” and it has the  most toxic snake venom in the world.

Both species are oviparous, and have that  handy sperm storage ability like brown snakes. But coastal taipans have an even  more impressive reproductive trick   up their figurative, and unnecessary, sleeves: they can reproduce asexually.

Scientists confirmed genetically that the females’ offspring in their study – all of which were male – developed from unfertilized eggs in  a process known as parthenogenesis. It’s not clear how common this is in nature,   but we can say that along with some  snakes, some sharks and aphids also do it! And the behavior that goes along with these weird reproductive methods is even better.

If you caught our episode about small  carpenter bees, you’ll know that animal sociality can take a lot of different forms. And that goes for snakes as well. Despite the “solitary hunter”  image of predatory snakes,   several of these species tend to, for  example, team up when it’s egg-laying time.

Female tree snakes lay their  eggs in the same nests together,   with possibly over a dozen individuals  sharing the same tree hollow. The species is also known for  huddling together to overwinter,   and grouping up can become an annual tradition. Cooler still, their aggregations can  sometimes be a mix of different snake   species hanging out together, which is a level  of cooperation that might come as a surprise.

Eastern brown snakes also nest communally,  often laying many eggs in the same spot. Scientists aren’t totally sure why some  reptile species make communal nests, but it might be to save energy, to  share limited nesting resources,   or to provide better egg  protection via safety in numbers. Whatever the case, it seems to be  a much more common practice than we   tend to give snakes and other reptiles credit for.

But our Australian snake cuddlefest doesn’t  end with simply laying eggs in the same place: female red-bellied black snakes group  up after they’re pregnant, and then stick together continuously until they give birth. They’ll usually form groups of up to six, and then they become inseparable--basking in the sun together by day,  and hiding out together by night--until they’ve had their little snake babies. This behavior may improve defense  from predators during a time when   the snakes are in a more vulnerable  state, but ultimately scientists   aren’t really sure about the exact  purpose of these snake sisterhoods.

And outside of the context of reproduction,   Australian snakes cozying up for shelter just  overall seems to be a pretty common occurrence. Aside from mating and hibernating, these groups  may form to help with moisture retention, energy conservation, and defense from predators. The latter few possibilities might also help   explain how /mixed-species/  aggregations might happen.

The point is, our Australian killer  snakes are social butterflies,   and they highlight a major misconception not  just about Australia, but about all snakes. We tend to associate being “social” with the kinds of animals we can most   easily observe acting social, which often  means those that are the most like us. But species that are harder to find, like snakes,   prove that /they can hang/ if only  we give them a chance to show it.

A recent study on Butler’s garter snakes found  that the species is not only social, but that   individuals break into subgroups based on age and  sex, like they’re highschoolers forming cliques. On top of that, the individuals that were more  social tended to be healthier than the loners,   which further highlights how far off we  are in imagining all snakes as solitary. Then again, garter snakes are kind of well  known for their impressive aggregations,   so maybe the idea of them being  friendly isn’t so groundbreaking.

So the researchers turned to ball  pythons, which don’t aggregate,   or communally den, or generally show  any obvious signs of being social. And yet, young pythons seemed to go out  of their way to be around one another,   prioritizing group formation when they could. Garter snakes in North America and pythons  in Africa may feel pretty removed from   our handful of Australian species,  but the broader point still applies: snakes are likely much more social than we think,   but our preconceived notions have  been in the way of us finding out.

The cool behaviors of brown snakes, black snakes,  tree snakes, and taipans are part of a bigger   picture of serpents as misunderstood  softies that deserve another look. And while “Australia’s snuggliest snakes” may   not take off as quickly as the “world’s  deadliest” moniker, we can certainly try! Often the easiest way for a beast to seem bizarre   is for it to just be different  from humans in enough ways.

The further from primates – and even mammals in general – that you get in the animal kingdom, the  more unfamiliar it’s all gonna feel. It’s no wonder that snakes – cold-blooded and scaly and limbless – have maintained such a hold on our  cultural imaginations for so long. So, as a place where an admittedly  high proportion of the world’s   deadliest snakes live, Australia has  understandably earned some notoriety.

But snakes are so much more  than their toxic bites! And if we take the time to get  to know them and how they behave,   we might find that we have a lot  more in common than we realized. Still probably not a bad idea to  give them plenty of space, though.

Sign up for the pin club at BizarreBeastsShow.com  and help keep the channel going. If you want a snake to be your first  pin, sign up by September 20th. And now, for some bonus facts… [♪♪ Bonus Facts ♪♪] Just because we wanted to talk about  more than biting and venom in this   episode doesn’t mean that those  two things aren’t still super cool!

And for the brown snake genus Pseudonaja,  these features are not one bite fits all. Snake venom composition varies from  species to species, which makes sense – lots of traits vary from species to species. But the chemical makeup of venom can  also be quite different not only within   the same type of snake, but even in the  same individual throughout their life.

Venom differences have been observed  before in various Pseudonaja species,   with each toxic cocktail corresponding to  specialization for a specific prey type. Most brown snake species adjust  their diets as they grow up, though,   eating mainly lizards when they’re  young, and more mammals as adults. So sure enough, their venom  changes throughout their life,   too, reflecting the updated chemical needs of  taking down animals in totally different taxa.

The species P. affinis takes this a step further,   though, modifying the actual shape  of their fangs as they get older. They have shorter, blunter fangs when they’re  young and are eating mostly lizards with tough   scales, and narrower, pointier fangs when their  diet includes more soft mammals as adults. It could just be that tooth shape is  an incidental developmental difference   throughout these snakes’ lives, but the exact  age when they make the fang change happens to   also be the age when their diet switches, making  this correlation seem a little more deliberate.

So while these Australian snakes certainly deserve  credit for more than just their effectiveness as   predators, it’s nonetheless impossible to  deny that they’re the best at what they do. We talked about ball pythons a little bit in the  episode, so I thought I should introduce, Laszlo! This is my ball python.

His name is Laszlo. He is- He'll be five in October, and,  he is, so he's pretty full grown. I mean, they grow throughout  their life a little bit,   but he's not going to get much bigger than this.

I think he's about 3.5ft long, but, he's a  great little guy, and he's our little friend. He's got, you can't see it right here,  but he has a little bump in his spine. That is just- He's always had it since he was a tiny baby.

But it doesn't bother him. He does just fine. He's perfectly good, little dude.

He lives in our house. And he's a great little friend. Yeah.

Isn't that right? You might have seen him,  when we did the Viper socks. All of the, all of the product photos  for that featured Laszlo being very cool.

A little model. Which is great. So in the episode we are  talking about Australian snakes,   but we don't even get to talk about the  fact that Australia has tons of pythons.

Not ball pythons, but they have carpet pythons   and even the smallest species  of python is from Australia. Do you have a favorite Australian snake that  we didn't get to talk about in the episode? Let us know in the comments!

If this was the first time you’ve  heard the ‘everything in Australia   wants to kill you trope,’ you might  be stuck in an algorithmic bubble,   missing out on perspectives from  different parts of the media landscape. But that’s where this episode's  sponsor, Ground News, can help. Ground News gathers related articles  from sources around the world,   and provides context about the source’s  political leaning, reliability,   and ownership so you can compare coverage and  get a more complete picture of the whole story.

For example, they pulled together  more than 60 sources reporting on   the discovery of a new giant  stick insect from Australia. Many of these articles came from  left- and center-leaning sources,   leaving a potential blindspot for anyone who  relies mostly on right-leaning sources for news. Plus, Ground News lets you compare and contrast   how different publications  frame the exact same story.

In this case, one headline called the  new bug ‘horrifyingly huge’ and leaned   into the ‘deadly Australia’  trope, while another called   it ‘spectacular,’ and many others stuck  to the purely descriptive ‘heaviest.’ Ground News also helps you assess the factuality  of the publications these headlines come from,   by averaging the scores of two trusted rating  systems that look at source credibility,   speed of corrections, and preservation of context. They’ve even been recognized by The Nobel Peace  Center for their impact on media literacy. Give it a try at ground.news/bb.

If you sign up with this link you'll get  40% off the Vantage plan which gives you   unlimited access to every Ground News feature. Make sure to use our link in the  description or QR code to sign up,   so you can see the full picture  and can think freely for yourself. [♪♪ OUTRO ♪♪]