Slither

I've seen people just crazy go nuts over a simple garter snake ("garden snake," in Baltimorese) and that is anxiety that should be reserved for when we meet a snake who might really do some harm, such as a rattlesnake (not too many of them around here, although the Timber Rattlesnake slithers through a habitat that includes western Maryland, and they can easily hop a Uber to get to Baltimore County) and copperheads, who are right at home around here.

However, the rattlesnake is courteous enough to give an audible signal that he is nearby, while the copperhead gives off no sound at all, especially if he's wearing earbuds.

And herpetologists, the people who study snakes and other reptiles and amphibians, tell us now that even though rattlesnakes are ones responsible for the  majority of bites inflicted on people, they don't even play fair with that rattling sound warning system.

Here's what they do: as a person gets closer to them, their tail-shaking noise gets louder, and then it switches to a much higher frequency all of a sudden.

And that sudden frequency change is what makes humans think the snake is closer that it really is. 

According to research, this is a system the snakes invented to signal that, yes, "we are here, so please don't step on us or anything. Also, I might just bite you."

That hissy rattly sound of the tail reminds you of every sweaty Western movie. Just like castanets, the sound is made by shaking hard objects - in this case, keratin - at the tip of the tail 90 times a second. Keratin is a protein and we use it to have fingernails and hair, not blood-chilling maraca noises, for crying out loud.

All this leads science to deduce that rattlesnakes are smart enough to know somehow that human ears lead us to believe that something that's getting louder is also moving faster and getting closer. So just like when you hear the neighborhood loudmouth getting louder, it gives you a chance to duck into the garage or a close-by saloon to avoid hearing about the shortcomings of the improvement association.

"Evolution is a random process, and what we might interpret from today's perspective as elegant design is in fact the outcome of thousands of trials of snakes encountering large mammals," says a herpetologist.

Such as the neighborhood loudspeaker!