I reread that old post, and the comments from Bruce and Serhei, but I had no answer for the question in 2018, and I have no answer now. I thought about it a bit more and then turned to grading homework. On the very first page I checked, the second sentence -- written to demonstrate understanding of the word distinguish by using it correctly in a sentence -- was this:
You can distinguish a poisonous snake from a harmless one by looking at its eyes and the shape of its head.
Some of the rules for recognizing poisonous snakes are just arbitrary things you have to memorize -- "red touch yellow, kill a fellow; red touch black, poison lack" (i.e., a snake that obeys the rule of tincture should be considered armed and dangerous) -- but it still strikes me as remarkable that nothing so arbitrary is required in the vast majority of cases. By far the best rule of thumb is: Just look at it's face; if it looks like it can kill you, it probably can.
3 comments:
I just realized that a possible biological explanation, is to look at this from the opposite end; and regard this an an evolved, adaptive ability by which humans can tell by looking when snakes are poisonous.
i.e. It is something in us, rather than in them, that makes the poisonous snakes look mean to us.
I discussed that possibility in the original post but thought, and still think, that the adaptive value of such an instinct is negligible. The best instinct is to assume all snakes are poisonous and stay away from them. Mistaking a poisonous snake for a harmless one is very costly, but there seems to be no evolutionary pressure to avoid the opposite error.
I think you may have a selection bias in your question, though. While true that vipers have those mean looking characteristics, there are other snakes that share those same mean-looking characteristics that aren't harmful at all. And there are plenty of poisonous snakes that don't look mean. Juxtaposing just those two types of snakes in your original post generates both the wrong assumptions and therefore the wrong question, I think.
In fact, the sync is interesting to me in that the actual words that you read are simply not true. The shape of the head and a snake's eyes are not good indicators at all, neither is a mean appearance or menacing activity. Even harmless snakes will act and even look like mean snakes when put on the defensive. Appearances can be very deceiving, going both ways on identification.
The overall concept reminds me of my dream of Mr. Potato Head, whose physiognomy was one of complete harmlessness and kindness. But the dream was all about Mr. Potato Head being very dangerous, despite his kind appearance.
Anyway, going back to Pharazon again, he was fooled by Sauron (in the story we have), partly because Sauron was still able to show himself in an extremely fair form. His physiognomy did not bely at all his true intent, which was completely evil.
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