Even rattlesnakes feel better with friends, study shows

• Rattlesnakes are calmed by being near another snake, a new study shows.
• We know this happens in other species, but it hasn't been studied in reptiles before.

Whether you're at a party full of strangers, taking a crowded bus, or giving a speech, having a friend nearby can help ease your stress. This phenomenon is called social buffering, and it turns out other animals feel it too.

Rodents, birds,and monkeys have all been found to benefit from the buddy system. But the latest member to join the friendly crew may surprise you — rattlesnakes.

Researchers found that giving rattlesnakes a partner decreased their heart rate in stressful situations. They reported their findings in a study published today in the journal Frontiers in Ethology.

This study is the first to demonstrate that this social support occurs in reptiles, said Chelsea Martin, the PhD candidate and herpetologist at Loma Linda University who ran the study.

Martin and her team arrived at this conclusion by measuring the resting heart rates of 25 wild-caught, adult rattlesnakes and comparing that to their heart rate after being startled. They found that the snakes who were alone in their enclosure had significantly higher heart rates than those that were with another snake.

Heart rate is a good measure of stress because it's immediate and gives researchers a clue to what's happening inside the snake's body, according to Martin. Generally, Martin said, the higher the heart rate, the more stressed the animal is.

In nature, some rattlesnakes live alone while others live communally. But even for snakes who normally lived alone, the researchers found the same results — when the animals were startled they had lower heart rates when around another snake.

So even though you might picture the snakes as solitary, tough types, Martin said they have an unjustifiably bad rap.

About 7,000-8,000 people are bit by venomous snakes annually, and roughly five die from snake bites each year in the US, according to the CDC. But the snakes aren't vicious, they're just defensive, and only bite when they feel threatened, Martin said.

She added that she hopes her study shows that snakes have complex inner worlds and that people should appreciate them, instead of fearing them.

"Oftentimes, we're afraid of things because we don't understand them. And so whenever we gain a better understanding, we can maybe be less afraid and learn to live in less fear of them. And I think too, studies like this, hopefully, make us as humans see that things like snakes aren't that different from us," Martin said.