I’ve seen some unexpected questions in this community, but “what’s the tensile strength of a snake?” has gotta be one of the strangest
When I wrote it I was thinking “this is the new airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.”
I was actually waiting for someone to ask me “western or eastern?”
Uhm, well, I don’t know hhiiiiighhhyyyyaaaaaaaa
Okay, afaik, there’s no listing anywhere of tensile strength of living tissues of various critters. There might be, but I’ve never run across one, and my life being what it is, you’d be amazed how often I’ve gone looking for similar information for one question or another someone asks.
That being said, I have dealt with recently dead snakes. We country as fuck up in the this piece, so we got a few snakes similar in size to a rattler, and I’d guesstimate that the average blacksnake is going to be close enough for government work to the average rattler.
So, yeah, I’d guesstimate you could strangle someone with a recently dead snake that was long enough to use as a murder tool. If you ever have to extricate a dead snake from something like a dryer vent, or the various mechanical parts of a car, you have to tug on the damn things pretty fucking hard. Even with sharp and/or hard bits involved to make holes in a snake, they don’t just pull apart. The few times I’ve had to pull a dead snake out of a car, the only thing that pulled off was whatever injury did the snake in.
In other words, if the skin and muscle are damaged enough, it’ll tear apart there. But otherwise? It’ll only come apart where it’s snagged on something, and I’m a big dude, so I can haul on things decently.
I’d say the overall toughness involved is at least similar to a decent leather belt
Depends on the size of the snake but in general the exodermis, or the scaled equivalent, is extremely tough.
Pick up a snake, see if you pull it apart. If you’re really strong you might be able to pop the head off it, but you’re not tearing a snake in half. Maybe a little tiny garder snake you could work apart if you twisted it back and forth enough but not in any short amount of time. It’ll be a liquified snake-dog inside and that skin still won’t snap.
Conversely, you can strangle someone to death with a twisted up plastic grocery bag. You can tear one of those apart with your hands.
I don’t have hard numbers because I would never do that with a poor little snake but I have worked in a kitchen and can testify on the resiliency of biological tissues.
That was exactly my problem. I’ve seen snakes, I got bit by a copperhead as a kids. My daughter had snakes as pets when she was a teen.
But I’ve never pulled on one. I’ve never even thought about if I could pull one apart until I saw that scean. Then I was thinking how people pull chicken heads off and thought “well hold on a second…”
That’s when I turned to the internet. We have to get to the bottom of this. In a humane way of course.
If I recall correctly, it takes about 100 lbs of force to pull the head off of a chicken. So while a strong person with a really good grip could do it, it’s hard to do with just arm strength alone. As soon as you employ back and leg muscle into it, with a way to pin it down though, it would be fairly easy.
So, applying that to a snake, and I’m not sure how the skin and ligament structure compares to a chicken, by hand, is probably really difficult if not impossible. However if you step on the snake (which, btw, is now an evil demon-snake from dimension-x out to kill because real snakes are cute and did nothing wrong) and wrap the other half around the wrist, it might be possible to leverage your whole body strength.
What do you mean? Crotalus or Sistrurus?
No idea about tensile strength but… Honestly, I would expect that is not the main issue. Why would a snake be less strong than your arm? You can strangle somebody with your arm.
How thick was the snake anyway?
I’d say about a 50 cent peice in thickness. The snake had been run over on the road before and I figure that’s gotta jeopardize the structural integrity.
As to why the snake it was halfway explained. The guy had run over the snake then the killer guy picked it up and tracked him down. Then strangled him with the snake. It was never really explained if the murder had a fondness for snakes or something and was mad it got run over? I feel like that’s what they were going for but it was not clear at all.
Fresh roadkill would probably hold, but if the snake had been dead for more than a few days, it would have been a much different scene involving burst intestines
He picked it up immediately but it was unclear how much time had passed from when he picked it up to when he caught up with the guy. I’d say probably still fresh enough. Rigor might be setting in.
Unless he hung on to that dead snake for many hours rigor isn’t going to be relevant.
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30.61 millimeters in diameter
I did that on purpose lol
plot twist: the snake was the man’s lover
You can strangle somebody with your arm.
But can you strangle someone with a dead arm? It sounds very different than using a live arm. Without any muscle activation I think you’d be putting a lot more stress on weak points in the snake’s body and it might just tear apart. But I have no first-hand experience strangling people with live or dead arms (or snakes), so I’m just playing armchair murderer here.
nah if you use the arm like a rod and pull it so it presses on the throat it should be just as good. Just make sure not to point the elbow forward.
Not with a live one. They’re stronger than you’d think and very hard to keep ahold of.
Some snakes do indeed strangle their prey. It stands to reason that if the snakes body can withstand the tension of strangling when the snake is itself the initiator, it can withstand the same tension when used as a rope. I would think the forces involved are largely the same, perhaps aside from the places where the strangler grabs the snake.
The forces may be similar but the application is different. If a snake is strangling someone its flexing its muscles to construct prey, if its being used to strangle someone its being stretched. At what point does the snake body tear apart?
If the snake were resisting the stretch the force required to tear it apart would be higher because you’d have to overcome the constriction/flexing force.
I thought of that about how muscles work. You might be able to bench press 500 lbs but if 500 lbs suddenly and violently yanked on your arm I think you’d lose that arm.
But I’m no arm scientist. That why I’m asking for advice. We can work this out together lol
Strangling required very little force if applied properly. I think around 3x blood pressure is hazardous for most arteries. That’s why tourniquets can be created by ‘professionals’ with literally any cloth
ok. just to be clear. this is not a sex thing. dude choked a guy with his snake and all.
No, a lot of things in the show were vague in unclear but oddly enough it was pretty specific the killer was not killing people for sexual reasons. Had a whole scene were he turned off some porn and made a speech about it. I don’t why he turned the porn on in the first place… thinking of the scene now. You see him turn it off but it never explains why it was on in the first place.
honestly this was just a joke reply.
What show was it?
Masters of horror season one episode 11 “pick me up”
I’d rate it a C at best but if you’re bored like me…
Snake skin is pretty tough. If it was roadkill (as I see you mention in another comment), it could potentially be like a leather belt which absolutely would be able to strangle someone.
I was actually made leather belts for 15 years. A little ship in Kissimmee Florida. I had never worked with snake skin though. Only cow, water buffalo, goat, nothing exotic.
I did have snake skin boots and know the scales fall off when kids rub them the wrong way, and I know it’s almost impossible to find a size 12 that doesn’t have a big seem running down the side. Like when someone is a size 70 and wants a single peice leather cow belt. My foot is wider than the snake was. Not much can be done.
I don’t think the tensile strength of one snake is enough, it would take two. If the snake had just eaten another snake before going to snake heaven it would without a doubt be enough to strangle a normal sized guy. 😵🐍🐍 Hsssssss!
“That’s why they call me Johnny two snakes”
