Open2it Community Blog

On more occasions than I can enumerate, I have been asked the question: Why do you like those darn reptiles? Not wanting to appear irresolute, for many years I tried to answer the question in a way that presented an air of purpose. I might reply that their behavior is complex and fascinating, or that I wondered what it might be like to experience the world as a snake does, what with the challenges of lacking certain appendages. As a biologist with a special interest in and experience with reptiles, I could get pretty specific about why I find those otherworldly vertebrates interesting, but are those reasons, however erudite, really why I am especially attracted to reptiles?

Why not birds? I find them quite agreeable, even fascinating. Indeed, as a young man I spent countless hours watching birds and I even built up a “life list” of over 300 species. Why not mammals? I like them too, though I find them rather messy and stinky. Still, there is something about a wild wolverine or a mongoose that piques my curiosity, and I am pretty fond of bats and wild cats, too. How about fishes? I have quite a lot of experience with that branch of the Vertebrata, too. As an undergraduate, I worked in a fish systematics lab for 3 ½ years, and since that time my research has included fish behavior. And what about invertebrates and plants? I really like those organisms, too.

So why have I always gravitated toward reptiles in my research and in the pets I keep? I’m finally going to confess: I simply don’t know. No matter how intellectual my answers to the bemused queries of others, I have always realized that they were inadequate to form the basis of my feelings about reptiles. I might as well have replied: What’s not to like about them?

I like them for the same reason that humans form passionate interests for other things, playing piano, for instance, or watching football while sitting on a couch. I, for one, am at a loss to fully comprehend the latter phenomenon, but sports spectatorship is quite a bit more prevalent than reptile enthusiasm.

As advanced as neuroscience has become, we are still at a loss to explain such things as life-long passions. Indeed we don’t even know where to start researching this conspicuous phenomenon, in part because there is so much variation among human subjects and also because we usually cannot identify the origins of the preferences in ourselves.

There was no specific piece of knowledge that I gained about reptiles that sparked my passion for them. I was immediately enthralled by the first one I ever saw. It was a nearly five-foot-long black rat snake (Pantherophis obsoletus; until recently Elaphe obsoleta). I encountered the captivating beast in a barn in southeast Kansas when I was six years old. It was emerging from a small hole in the hay loft and had nearly bridged a three foot gap between the hole in the ceiling and a barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) nest containing four chicks. Its outstretched body was swaying under the strain of what seemed an impossible unsupported span as it slowly squeezed through the tight hole and inched closer to the mud nest. The parents of the nestlings were flying in and out of the barn, madly harassing the serpent in a vain attempt to break his resolve. It was their distress cries that had drawn me to the scene.

My dad was about 300 feet away at his water well drilling rig and I dashed over to summon him. I wanted someone else to experience the same exhilaration that I was feeling. By the time we got back, the snake’s head was but an inch from the nest. I didn’t know what would happen next, but I wanted to watch it. In an instant, Dad picked up a hoe and with the handle he knocked the snake down. I was stunned. That was not what I expected him to do and certainly not what I had wanted, but there were more immediate concerns. My heart was racing and, as my dad raised the business end of the hoe to deliver a chop, I lurched forward to protect the snake. “No Dad!,” I cried, “I want to keep it!” I don’t know who was more disoriented, the snake or my father, but after some strenuous pleading he let me take the snake home in a bucket.

“Blackie” pushed the lid off of the bucket and slithered off into my neighborhood a few days later, but there would be many more pet serpents after him. Many years later, my father admitted to me that one of the hardest things he ever had to do was to keep a stone face when I traipsed up to his drilling rig with a snake in my hand. He had been in the Marine Corps and wanted to preserve that tough guy image around his boy, but all those snakes gave him the willies, he said.

Both of my parents recall that my childhood interest in creatures of all kinds was an unstoppable force, but, to their recurrent distress, reptiles were what fascinated me most. It came as no surprise to them or anyone else when I decided to pursue a career in biology with emphasis on herpetological studies.

The question of broad interest concerns idiosyncratic passions in general. We can more easily explain those passions driven by hormones or other biological imperatives. They are adaptive functions, so our motivations to meet their ends are not so mysterious, but what makes someone passionately interested in something that has little or no adaptive value, or even practical value? What rational or practical reason is there for spending countless hours moving chess pieces around on a board, or for investing enough time in a video game to reach the final level?

My father has a passion for obscure antiques and will buy them impulsively. My brother is fascinated by old electronic equipment and he scavenges and stores broken equipment that he will admit is worthless to anyone but him. I have a friend who collects dolls, another who hoards thousands of books (most of which he has never and will never read), and one who has such a passion for deal shopping that she will buy almost anything that is on sale—this to the detriment of her financial stability and the health of her marriage. Of course, the depths of irrational passions can also be masked by rational pretenses. I have a friend who invests tremendous time in finding and preparing fossil specimens for his personal collection, many of them worth a great deal of money, but not one that he will part with. Another friend collects coins that might increase in value, and I could cite dozens of similar activities that people become passionate about, but the question remains: Why do we pick certain pursuits over others?

I think that it is likely that we don’t pick at all. The arbitrary nature of individual predilections seems more consistent with a model based on innate brain organization. Many of us are naturally drawn to certain objects or activities and we maintain an interest in them for life. There are, however, those who are not drawn to anything. I know people who don’t have any passions to speak of—no hobbies, no specific career aspirations, no motivating interests. As someone who has way too many hobbies, plans, and aspirations, I find it hard to fathom the mental worlds of such people, and I wonder what fundamental differences in brain organization make them so different from me.

For now, the answers are illusive, but perhaps one day brain imaging techniques will fill in the gaps. If and when some bright scientist tackles the origins of idiosyncratic passions, I would gleefully volunteer as an experimental subject. I can just imagine the protocol. The researcher inserts me into the cyclotron and gathers some baseline PET data. Then a baseball game is played on a radio and at some random point the commentators and cheers are abruptly interrupted by the chorus of a large Tokay Gecko or the rumbling growl of a Nile Crocodile. There is little question in my mind that some part of my brain would light up like a Las Vegas billboard.