Our reactions to snakes range from disgust, horror, and ophidiophobia to curiosity, consumption, and deification. These findings, combined with observations of snake interactions with nonhuman primates and interpreted within the context of snake and primate phylogenies, corroborate the hypothesis that complex ecological interactions have long characterized our shared evolutionary history. Moreover, Agta ate pythons as well as three other animal species taken by the snakes, and therefore, people and pythons were reciprocally prey, predators, and potential competitors. Twenty-six percent of adult male respondents had survived predation attempts by reticulated pythons, and between 19, there were six fatal attacks on members of the group. Here, we report ethnographic observations of 120 Philippine Agta Negritos when they were still preliterate hunter–gatherers. Relationships between primates and snakes are of widespread interest from anthropological, psychological, and evolutionary perspectives, but surprisingly little is known about the dangers that serpents have posed to people with prehistoric lifestyles and to nonhuman primates. Pythons also ate the three primary mammalian prey species of the Agta, who learned of this competitive relationship from the stomach contents of pythons that they butchered. P1) that yielded at least 25 kg meat, assuming a butchering efficiency of 33%. examined a 6.9-m python after a hunter shot it ( Fig.
The Agta ate pythons as well as deer, wild pigs, and monkeys, and T.N.H. Six fatal incidents included one in which a python entered a thatched dwelling, killed two children, and was coiled around and swallowing one of them headfirst when the father returned and killed the snake with his bolo. Usually those people attacked had sustained bites that left scars on the lower limbs, hands, and torso, and they had escaped by dispatching snakes with a bolo knife or homemade shotgun. Reticulated pythons had attacked 26% of 58 male respondents but only 1 woman, presumably because mainly men hunted in the rainforest for game and edible plants. began working with the Agta Negritos in 1962, and in 1976, when they were still preliterate foragers ( 2), he used ethnographic techniques to interview 120 adults in northern Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines. Lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, and chimpanzees respond to snakes with mobbing, group defense, social learning, and unease at the scenes of fatal encounters. Nonhuman primates also dispatch dangerous serpents, as exemplified by a tarsier that ate an Asian coral snake and capuchins that used branches to kill a large viper. Conversely, prehistoric Amerindians and modern humans have killed and eaten boas, pythons, and numerous other harmless and venomous snakes. For example, reticulated pythons take lorises, tarsiers, and several species of monkeys, whereas boa constrictors eat tamarins, titis, marmosets, sakis, and capuchins. No snakes specialize on primates, but some regularly predate them. Field observations show that primates have been ambushed by snakes as they walked on the ground, descended from trees, and passed over water on vegetation although adults are often taken, juveniles have been snatched from mothers or eaten with them. AUTHOR SUMMARYĪ winnowing of natural history literature reveals that snakes do kill tree shrews and at least 26 species of lemurs, galagos, lorises, tarsiers, New and Old World monkeys, and gibbons. These findings, interpreted within the context of snake and primate phylogenies, corroborate the hypothesis that complex ecological interactions have long characterized our shared evolutionary history.
Natural history data document snake predation on tree shrews and 26 species of nonhuman primates as well as many species of primates approaching, mobbing, killing, and sometimes eating snakes. Agta ate pythons as well as deer, wild pigs, and monkeys, which are also eaten by pythons, and therefore, the two species were reciprocally prey, predators, and potential competitors. Here, we report ethnographic observations of 120 Philippine Agta Negritos when they were still preliterate hunter–gatherers, among whom 26% of adult males had survived predation attempts by reticulated pythons. Relationships between primates and snakes are of widespread interest from anthropological, psychological, and evolutionary perspectives, but surprisingly, little is known about the dangers that serpents have posed to people with prehistoric lifestyles and nonhuman primates.
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