Today, July 16th is World Snake Day and we celebrate an animal that is so often irrationally feared! With the growing efforts of Save The Snakes and other organizations dedicated to snake conservation, more people are understanding their importance and appreciating their value.
When thinking about pests in your homes, you immediately think of rats. Rats will stop at nothing to eat your leftover crumbs and hide away, simply waiting to gnaw at something more. Enter the role of snakes! Snakes are some of the best controllers for rat populations with some snakes consuming as many as 3-4 rats in a week. On the other end of the scale, snakes are important prey items for animals such as birds and killing snakes would cause declines in bird populations! Our goal is to translate this message to people around the world to ensure the safety of snakes.
We at Save The Snakes think that snakes are pretty amazing, particularly because of their important role in our ecosystems. We work with people from around the world to ensure that snakes are not killed out of fear. Our conservation partners and Snake Rescue Teams are an essential part of a network of individuals who fulfill Save The Snakes’ mission to protect threatened snake populations and mitigate human-snake conflict. Their tireless efforts are truly remarkable and inspiring!
As Save The Snakes works to create awareness about snakes and mitigate human-snake conflict, we hope to continue growing and connecting with a wide network of conservationists, from around the world, to educate communities to live in harmony with snakes and protect them. By engaging with community members to understand the importance of snakes, we are working to create a culture of appreciating snakes. So today we celebrate snakes and share some reasons why we love them.
Here’s what some of our advisory committee members had to say about why they love snakes:
“Despite having no legs and only a tube-like body, snakes can do most things that other animals can do. We have snakes that live in marine environments, snakes that live at the top of trees and others that glide from one tree to another. I don’t think there are any questions in evolutionary biology that you can’t ask using snakes as a model.”- Sara Ruane
“I love how they can move with no legs. They can eat things much bigger than they are and what I really love is how little we know about them, leaving so much room to ask questions and find out about them. We don’t even know what they are doing most of the time. It’s really exciting.”- Andrew Durso
“Snakes come in a variety of coloration and patterns which make them look so unique. They have so many traits that are such incredible adaptations.”- Kelly Donithan
They come in brown, green, blue and even yellow. Fat, thin and scaly everywhere, they can climb trees and burrow underground, but so often they are hard to be found. Yes, snakes are probably one of the most unique animals around.
SUPPORT SNAKE CONSERVATION EFFORTS
Save The Snakes depends on the compassion and dedication of individuals to support our snake conservation efforts around the world. Check out some of these ways you can get involved with our organization and support our work to save the snakes.
If you can afford to be generous to donate, please do. By making a donation to Save The Snakes, you’ll join us in our commitment to save snakes and empower communities to reduce human-snake conflict. Your gift will be put to immediate use to bolster many urgent conservation and education initiatives.