\n<\/p>\n
At its core, Zootopia 2 is a defense of snakes. The Oscar-nominated sequel to Zootopia centers on an unlikely pair of animal police officers\u2014Judy Hopps, a rabbit, and her fox partner, Nick Wilde\u2014who together work to solve the mystery surrounding the family of a surprisingly lovable pit viper called Gary De\u2019Snake. Along the way, they discover why snakes like Gary were driven out of the city of Zootopia.<\/p>\n
In the world of the film, reptiles\u2014but especially snakes\u2014are outcasts from mammal-centric society. But the stigma, Gary (voiced by Ke Huy Quan) tells Hopps, is misplaced: \u201cSnakes never hurt anyone,\u201d he explains to the rabbit (Ginnifer Goodwin). \u201cWe aren\u2019t the bad guys.\u201d Gary inspires Hopps and Wilde (Jason Bateman) to try to prove snakes aren\u2019t so bad and bring them back to Zootopia.<\/p>\n
Gary\u2019s story is quite a change of pace from the usual villainous role of snakes in Hollywood (see The Jungle Book, the Harry Potter franchise, Snakes on a Plane, Anaconda) and the perception of them in human societies more broadly (see the Book of Genesis). But from a scientific standpoint, there are extremely good reasons to keep snakes around: they\u2019re a critical piece of the ecosystem.<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n
If snakes were somehow excluded from the animal world, as they were from society in Zootopia 2, that would almost certainly have disastrous consequences. \u201cIf they were to disappear, we\u2019d be in big trouble,\u201d says Emily Taylor, director of the Physiological Ecology of Reptiles Laboratory (PERL) at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.<\/p>\n
Snakes are \u201cmesopredators,\u201d which means that they eat small rodents, such as squirrels and mice, but are also themselves eaten by other predators, such as hawks, owls, badgers and coyotes, Taylor says. \u201cBecause of that, they play a doubly important role in ecosystem health.” In other words, eliminating them from the animal kingdom would be like yanking an entire tier of Jenga blocks out of the middle of the tower.<\/p>\n
The larger effect is perhaps on snakes\u2019 prey: eliminating the reptiles would mean that rodents would be left without a key predator, enabling rats and mice to reproduce unchecked, Taylor says, \u201cand they would overrun the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would lead to a massive denuding of vegetation, including everything from our native plants out there to our crops,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
This fear is backed by science: In one 2024 study, a group of Australian researchers estimated that, every year, a single adult eastern brown snake consumes approximately 50 mice, possibly more. At their regular density levels in Australian farmlands, the researchers estimated that brown snakes alone might remove thousands of mice annually for every square kilometer of farmland.<\/p>\n
By extension, snakes also help to keep diseases carried by rodents\u2014hantaviruses, bubonic plague, Lyme disease, and more\u2014under control. Snakes may occasionally carry Salmonella, but in general, snake diseases don\u2019t pose nearly as much risk to humans as rodents do, Taylor says.<\/p>\n
Snakes can also act as \u201cecosystem engineers\u201d by aiding in seed dispersal, more recent research shows. In January a team of scientists found that western diamondback rattlesnakes that eat small mammals that consume and digest seeds can \u201crescue\u201d the seeds by pooping them out. This process also provides \u201ca little pile of fertilizer,\u201d Taylor explains, helping the seeds to germinate.<\/p>\n
Despite all these benefits, snakes are among humans\u2019 top phobias. In one 2001 Gallup poll, for example, Americans said they were more afraid of snakes than anything else they were asked about, including \u201cbeing closed in a small space,\u201d \u201cneedles and getting shots,\u201d \u201cheights\u201d and \u201cpublic speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our fears aren\u2019t entirely without merit. Gary\u2019s claim that snakes \u201cnever hurt anyone\u201d isn\u2019t entirely true: snake bites kill an estimated 81,410 to 137,880 people globally every year, according to the World Health Organization. And climate change is going to make snake bites much more likely, recent research suggests. In the U.S., snake-bite deaths are much lower, representing around five people per year, in part because we have better access to medical treatment, Taylor says.<\/p>\n
But portraying snake exclusively as \u201cvillains\u201d in pop culture only serves to exacerbate people\u2019s fear of the reptiles, Taylor says, which she believes is unfortunate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people can see that snakes are actually gentle and they want nothing to do with people\u2014and can appreciate them from a distance\u2014then I think that that can lead to an appreciation of snakes and not fear of snakes,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At its core, Zootopia 2 is a defense of snakes. The Oscar-nominated sequel to Zootopia centers on an unlikely pair of animal police officers\u2014Judy Hopps, a rabbit, and her fox partner, Nick Wilde\u2014who together work to solve the mystery surrounding the family of a surprisingly lovable pit viper called Gary De\u2019Snake. Along the way, they<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[516,19258,23813],"class_list":{"0":"post-46807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-snakes","10":"tag-zootopia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}