No idea about tensile strength but… Honestly, I would expect that is not the main issue. Why would a snake be less strong than your arm? You can strangle somebody with your arm.
How thick was the snake anyway?
I’m watching something on tv and a dude strangled another dude with rattle snake. Is that possible? What’s the tensile strength of a snake?
Submitted 3 days ago by Aeao@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 3 days ago
Aeao@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’d say about a 50 cent peice in thickness. The snake had been run over on the road before and I figure that’s gotta jeopardize the structural integrity.
As to why the snake it was halfway explained. The guy had run over the snake then the killer guy picked it up and tracked him down. Then strangled him with the snake. It was never really explained if the murder had a fondness for snakes or something and was mad it got run over? I feel like that’s what they were going for but it was not clear at all.
rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Fresh roadkill would probably hold, but if the snake had been dead for more than a few days, it would be been a much different scene involving burst intestines
snpalavan@lemmy.world 3 days ago
plot twist: the snake was the man’s lover
AnAmericanPotato@programming.dev 2 days ago
You can strangle somebody with your arm.
But can you strangle someone with a dead arm? It sounds very different than using a live arm. Without any muscle activation I think you’d be putting a lot more stress on weak points in the snake’s body and it might just tear apart. But I have no first-hand experience strangling people with live or dead arms (or snakes), so I’m just playing armchair murderer here.
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 days ago
nah if you use the arm like a rod and pull it so it presses on the throat it should be just as good. Just make sure not to point the elbow forward.
MrOtingocni@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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 shirt amount of time.
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.
Aeao@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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 we 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.
MrOtingocni@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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 chick, by hand, is probably really difficult if not very unlikely. 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.
JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Not with a live one. They’re stronger than you’d think and very hard to keep ahold of.
moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 2 days ago
What do you mean? Crotalus or Sistrurus?
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 2 days ago
Some snakes do indeed strangle their prey. It stands to reason that if the snakes body can withstand the tension of strangling when the snake is itself the initiator, it can withstand the same tension when used as a rope. I would think the forces involved are largely the same, perhaps aside from the places where the strangler grabs the snake.
core@leminal.space 2 days ago
The forces may be similar but the application is different. If a snake is strangling someone its flexing its muscles to construct prey, if its being used to strangle someone its being stretched. At what point does the snake body tear apart?
If the snake were resisting the stretch the force required to test it apart would be higher because you’d have to overcome the constriction/flexing force.
Aeao@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I thought of that but then thought about how muscles work. You might be able to bench press 500 lbs but if 500 lbs suddenly and violently yanked on your arm I think you’d lose that arm.
But I’m no arm scientist. That why I’m asking for advice. We can work this out together lol
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 days ago
Snake skin is pretty tough. If it was roadkill (as I see you mention in another comment), it could potentially be like a leather belt which absolutely would be able to strangle someone.
Aeao@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I was actually made leather belts for 15 years. A little ship in Kissimmee Florida. I had never worked with snake skin though. Only cow, water buffalo, goat, nothing exotic.
I did have snake skin boots and know the scales fall off when kids rub them the wrong way, and I know it’s almost impossible to find a size 12 that doesn’t have a big seem running down the side. Like when someone is a size 70 and wants a single peice leather cow belt. My foot is wider than the snake was. Not much can be done.
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 days ago
ok. just to be clear. this is not a sex thing. dude choked a guy with his snake and all.
Aeao@lemmy.world 2 days ago
No, a lot of things in the show were vague in unclear but oddly enough it was pretty specific the killer was not killing people for sexual reasons. Had a whole scene were he turned off some porn and made a speech about it. I don’t why he turned the porn on in the first place… thinking of the scene now. You see him turn it off but it never explains why it was on in the first place.
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 days ago
honestly this was just a joke reply.
kunaltyagi@programming.dev 2 days ago
Strangling required very little force if applied properly. I think around 3x blood pressure is hazardous for most arteries. That’s why tourniquets can be created by ‘professionals’ with literally any cloth
RustyLog@fedinsfw.app 2 days ago
I don’t think the tensile strength of one snake is enough, it would take two. If the snake had just eaten another snake before going to snake heaven it would without a doubt be enough to strangle a normal sized guy. 😵🐍🐍 Hsssssss!
Aeao@lemmy.world 2 days ago
“That’s why they call me Johnny two snakes”
magnetosphere@fedia.io 3 days ago
I’ve seen some unexpected questions in this community, but “what’s the tensile strength of a snake?” has gotta be one of the strangest
Aeao@lemmy.world 2 days ago
When I wrote it I was thinking “this is the new airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.”
I was actually waiting for someone to ask me “western or eastern?”
P1nkman@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Uhm, well, I don’t know hhiiiiighhhyyyyaaaaaaaa