Snakes on a plane

The title says it all really; obviously my hopes were high for this movie. There would be no need to spot the one tiny misplaced cockroach here. Samuel L. Jackson fights a whole crate of snakes on the loose on a plane from Hawaii to L.A. Although the snakes are all supposed to be highly venomous, any snake enthusiast will have recognized their favorite species of harmless snake among the cast: milk snakes, corn snakes, bull snakes, rat snakes and a big Burmese python. A total of 450 live non-poisonous snakes were used in the film. With such great animal casting, you wonder why they would also have these sad motionless rubber snakes lying around in some scenes. But despite the fact that almost all venomous snake species on this movie were CGI, they did a fairly good job. The CGI snakes are recognizable as real species, although the effectiveness of their venom, their athletic abilities, colors and aggression are very much exaggerated. The story line has the snakes all worked up on “pheromones” (Jackson:”Snakes on crack!?”). Although male snakes do use chemical cues to follow the trail of female snakes, it would not really make them go nuts like in the movie. The male snakes touch the ground, or any object, with the tips of their forked tongue. They then deposit their two tiny ground samples onto the equally split Jacobson’s organ in the roof of its mouth. This advanced smell organ then tells the male snake if a female passed there. Not only does it tell the snake what smell is there, but also which tongue-tip was carrying the strongest smell. Thanks to their split tongue, snakes can smell in stereo. Great for tracking females, or lunch. Coupled with the ability of snakes to sense heat, as nicely imaged in the movie, snakes live in a sensory world very different from our vision and sound dominated one. Snakes would not enjoy this movie at all. Or any movie for that matter, with their limited vision and lack of external ears.
One great scene has the large (CGI) Burmese python eat a small pet dog of one of the main characters. Having kept large specimens of this species myself (3.5m), I found the fast grabbing and strangling movements completely realistic! The CGI recreation of the strangling of a passenger however, was apparently not inspired on a real event, and looked very unnatural. But although the CGI snakes were impressively done, I guess it would not have hurt the movie to have some shots of real venomous snakes. Maybe a nice big rattler draped on empty airplane seats, or the digital Gabon viper that kills the captain in a real-life incarnation on some instrument panel? Only one real-life venomous snake appears in the film. In one of the few scenes not on the plane, agents track down the snake-dealer who supplied the snakes causing so much havoc in the air. In the snake dealer’s menagerie, from one of the terrariums a real rattle snake flicks its forked tongue at us.

Jurassic Park

There has been plenty of discussion about the validity of the scientific premises of this movie. Whether or not dino-DNA can be extracted from amber, or whether or not the colors and skin textures of the dinosaurs are right. All interesting biological questions. Additionally, a whole list of errors that occur in the movie can be found on the internet. The list lacks one small error in my opinion. In the movie, after their arrival at the park, the guests all go on an amusement-park like ride. During this ride, video screens explain how it is possible that the dinosaurs that roam the island were brought back to life. As Mr.DNA explains how dino-DNA might have found its way into the body of a mosquito, footage is shown of a mosquito being trapped by oozing sap. This sap will then turn into amber, preserving the mosquito and it’s last meal of dino-blood inside. The mosquito being trapped by the sap has pretty plume-shaped antennae however, showing that it is in fact a male. Male mosquitoes do not drink blood. Only the females drink blood to get the protein they need to lay their eggs. Males use their big plume-shaped antennae to find the females. So the Jurassic park scientists will be drilling for dino-DNA in vain with that particular specimen. It is a tiny error, and it is forgivable in the light of the fact that this short scene has probably taught more people about DNA than any education program! Go Mr. DNA!