Rattlesnake Bites To Rise In Fall; Men At Greater Risk Per Study

PALO ALTO, CA -- Watch out men: You could be bitten by more things than a woman’s scorn this fall. It seems a Stanford researcher has found rattlesnakes lash out more often at men than women, and this month is predicted to be particularly bad according to his 20-year study.

Grant Lipman, a Stanford University researcher and emergency room doctor, took the 5,365 snakebites reported to the California Poison Control System from 1997 to 2017 and noticed a high prevalence of bites occurred about 18 months after a heavy rain season. In surmising this data, October lines up after an extremely rainy spring in 2017.

Biologists make the case that heavy rain leads to a build up of grass and rodents foraging in this vegetation. Snakes emerge to get them.

In the last decade, last year’s winter-spring season blows away any other year. At the San Francisco Airport, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported a total 18.96 inches of rain in the first four months of the year. In San Jose, the level of precipitation came in as 14.02 for the same time period. As a comparison, a little over 10 inches fell on the airport this year, while San Jose experienced half the total it did the year before.

“We found there’s a lag time that increases the number of bites by 3.9 percent,” Lipman told Patch.

What Lipman’s team of researchers found defies earlier logic that snakes come out and cover more territory to seek food after a drought. While studying weather events prompted by climate change, they noticed the snakes were more active following heavy precipitation levels.

And for those running and hiking the trails, keep in mind another El Nino winter is building in the Pacific. The tropical weather phenomenon that originates off the western shores of South America is often associated with some of our wettest winter-springs. So the fall of 2020 could be another snarling rattlesnake year – especially for men.

Lipman discovered through research of national trends in rattlesnake bites that of those recreating on the trails or even meandering outdoors near home men suffer from three quarters of the bites reported. Eighty percent of the bites occurred yards from the house. The average age is 37 years old.

Why men more than women?

They simply “do stupid things,” he said. “Women run away.”

Lipman also notes that snakebites are underreported.

Many people don’t contact a poison control center when they’re bitten. The best wisdom is to go to an emergency room, he added.

The researchers studied all 58 California counties. Mariposa County is the snakebite capital – with nearly 97 bites per 1 million people. Santa Clara County shows 4.1 bites out of a million; 9 bites for Contra Costa County; 6.5 in Santa Cruz County; and 1.7 in San Mateo County.

Five deaths were reported in the state over the last two decades, according to the journal Clinical Toxicology.

When seeing one, it’s advised to stay two “snake lengths” away to prevent being bitten.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife urges those wishing to avoid rattlesnake bites to:

• Stay alert
• Wear study boots and loose-fitting pants
• Stick to well-used trails
• Refrain from putting your hands where you can’t see
• Don’t grab sticks in the water as snakes can swim
• Leash your dog while hiking

Lipman mentioned he hears most people who get bitten declaring they were “minding their own business” while reaching under a building, overturning a log or stumbling on a path.

“Usually it’s the snakes that were minding their own business,” he said.

--Images via Shutterstock and Paul Sakuma, Stanford School of Medicine