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.
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.