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If you've ever been hiking or hiking in the wilderness of the western United States, you've certainly been warned to beware of poisonous snakes. A new study suggests that you'd better venture into the wilderness during drought. In the results published in the journal Clinical Toxicology On Tuesday, a team of scientists analyzed 20 years of snake bite data accumulated throughout California to determine whether rains correlated with an increase in the incidence of snakebites in humans.
During the 2015 drought, Grant Lipman, emergency medicine bailer at Stanford University, was crossing the Santa Clara Mountains in California when he noticed a warning sign for them. rattlesnakes, which he had never seen before. "Three miles later, I saw a big rattlesnake crossing the trail," he says. "A week later, my colleague saw the same thing, during a race in a different area."
He began to wonder why there could be more snake bites during a drought. "The popular press was full of articles and publications on increasing snake bite during the drought," he says. "However, no science in North America has shown that this was true." Lipman and his colleagues went to work to study the impact and relationship of extreme weather events on snakebites and what it meant for human health.
They dipped between 1997 and 2017 in 5,365 cases of rattlesnake bites reported to the California pest control system and compared these incidents with NASA and National Drought Mitigation data.
Using a predictive algorithm that evaluated the impact of climate change on disease and injury rates, Lipman and his team found that each 10% increase in precipitation over an 18-month period resulted in an increase in 39, about 4% of snake bites. In addition, reports on snake bites hit a low in 2015 and 2016, when the state experienced a particularly severe drought.
Co-author Caleb Phillips of the University of Colorado added that even if they controlled the usual range of variables (unusual population changes or weather events), the team was not However, it is important to remember that the data only includes reported bites, and although 4% may seem small, it still means a two-digit difference in the reported cases. A rattlesnake sting can be fatal if proper treatment is not found and the recovery process is costly and difficult.
More importantly, the results upset a conventional assumption about wildlife – a hypothesis without any real scientific support. According to the initial theory, a drought meant less food available, causing snakes (and other wild animals) to become more ferocious and to hunt more tenaciously. Instead, we see the opposite that is true: greater rainfall leads to more bushes and flora, which provides more food for rodents and other prey, which actually leads to more food for snakes. But more food for snakes means more snakes, which would encourage more snake bites. According to Lipman, this trend is similar to previous findings found in the study of meteorological conditions and rodent populations responsible for the spread of hantavirus.
"The findings correspond exactly to what I expected," says William Hayes, a biologist at Loma Linda University in California, who did not participate in the study. "With reduced reproduction of the rattlesnake [caused by drought], snake populations are decreasing and there are fewer snakes – especially snakes – to inflict snake bites. According to Hayes, in an article published in 2010, 82% of California snake bites are caused by young snakes, which are usually born in the fall when the North American monsoon eventually collapsed.
Yet Hayes, who has done extensive research on the severity and treatment of snakebites, insists that the results should not derail the threat of rattlesnakes. "Rattlesnakes are shy, curious and uncontentious creatures who do not want to have anything to do with us," he says. "They respond with fear and defend themselves by biting only as a last resort. In the United States, the chances of surviving a poisonous snake bite are close to 99.9% – even if you risk serious injury and get a half-million dollar hospital bill.
More broadly, the study is another indication of how global warming is having a direct and predictable impact on human injury. The complexity of the climate means that the North American monsoon could extend to winter or that the storm systems on the west coast could increase. Or maybe the drought will worsen, which is great news to prevent snake bites, but could exacerbate predatory behavior in other animals. "There are climate change deniers, but I've never heard of a snake bite denier," says Lipman, who wants to use the same algorithm in future studies on the spread of the Lyme disease and other emerging tropical diseases. "It is hoped that studies like this one can make people realize that our actions that fuel climate change are having measurable impacts on human health."
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