How do snakes slither?
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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, you send us the questions and Melody Beaudet and I go find answers. Today, we got to get out of the studio and actually go in search of not just answers, but in search of actual snakes.

That's right. Today we're doing an episode all about snakes. You have sent us a lot of snake questions, and a few of your questions were about one specific kind of snake that a lot of people are curious about. Rattlesnakes.

Depending on where you live, you might have rattlesnakes around in your own neighborhood. Here in the Northeast, where we're based, there are only a very few populations of timber rattlesnakes. So we decided to meet up with one of the scientists who studies them. So my name is Lisa Papino. I work for the New York State DEC as a biologist, and specifically I work with reptile and amphibians.

We met up with Lisa on a very hot day in August in New York State. I can only tell you to a certain extent where we are because we're talking about rattlesnakes and we really want to keep these den and basking locations protected, which means we don't want people really to be coming and visiting them. And we're in, I'll say, we're in Sullivan County in New York, which is an area in the Hudson Valley, the southeastern part of the state. Why do you need to keep...

Rattlesnake Den's secret. Are people too excited about rattlesnakes or do people hurt rattlesnakes? Sure, it's a little bit of both. There are a lot of people who are very afraid of snakes, especially venomous species. So it's possible someone could come out here and you can have a drastic effect on a rattlesnake population if you know where a den is and you come at the right time of year when they're going in and out of the den if we want to try to hurt them.

I don't think so much of that's happening anymore. I do still think people definitely kill the snakes, but

Maybe a bigger concern is that some people are really interested in them and they just want to come out and visit the snakes. They want to see as many as they can see. Maybe they want to try to catch and handle them. And it's really just not good for the snakes. It stresses them out and then it disturbs the habitat too. If you have a bunch of people walking through an area, you're going to crumble up a bunch of vegetation. It might attract predators to the area. So we really prefer to keep it protected just to keep people out of there.

But we were lucky enough to get to go with Lisa to see if we could find any rattlesnakes so that you could hear what they sound like and learn a little bit more about them. And we also asked Lisa to answer all the other snake questions you've sent us too. Everyone should put snake gators on. First, we had to get suited up with long pants, sturdy boots, and gators, a thick fabric we wrapped around the lower part of our legs to protect us, just in case we got bitten by a snake.

Though I should say right off the bat, timber rattlesnakes are very shy and it's extremely rare for a human to get bitten by one of them. But better safe than sorry. We also had to spray our boots because some snakes are getting a disease called snake fungal disease and Lisa didn't want us to just possibly bring that disease in from anywhere else so we had to make sure we had clean boots.

Once we were ready to go, Lisa took us to a spot where snakes like to sunbathe. Basking areas are a really important environment to rattlesnakes and really to all snakes.

They're ectothermic, which is cold-blooded, which means they rely on their environment to keep themselves warm or to cool themselves down. So these basking areas are just areas without many trees, open canopy that lets a lot of sunlight in. And usually they have rocks that get nice and warm. The snakes like to sit out on those warm rocks and bask in the sun.

So basking just means lying out in the sun, basically. Exactly. They'll lie their bodies out to kind of pick up some of that sun and warm their bodies up. And that's important for their metabolism, things like digestion. We stopped in an open area in the forest, pretty far away from any houses or roads, with a lot of rocky outcroppings where the snakes could not only soak up the sun, but slither back into a rock or crack or crevice if they needed to get away from danger.

Even though rattlesnakes are a venomous species, meaning that if they bite an animal, their venom could seriously hurt or kill that animal, they actually do have predators. Humans sometimes kill rattlesnakes, as Lisa said. But rattlesnakes face other predators as well. Young snakes especially are eaten by hawks, bobcats, coyotes, foxes, even skunks. So they like to have good places to hide. Before too long, Lisa heard something. What's a rattlesnake?

I don't see it yet. Do you hear it? Yeah, I did once she pointed it out. But to be honest, it kind of sounded like the insects we'd been hearing. Lisa turned around and quickly walked and jumped over the rocks to where she thought she'd heard the sound. And sure enough... He's hanging out there. So that's a young rattlesnake. He's doing his best. Tucked up into a dark little spot underneath a rock was a pretty small snake.

Lisa shined a flashlight in so we could take a look. What we're seeing is a sub-adult, maybe a juvenile rattlesnake that's put itself under the rock. He may have been basking a minute ago, but as he heard us approach, he probably decided, I'm going to get out of here. And you can see he's down there. And actually, I can see his tail now, so he is definitely a juvenile, no question, because there's only a couple segments. There's even, we call it a button, which...

is the very first rattle segment that a baby rattlesnake has. It's kind of a cute term. So he has a butt in maybe one or two other segments, which suggests he's probably only maybe a year or two old. They tend to shed about once or twice a year. Every time they shed, they put on a new segment of that rattle. I'm Ellie, and

I'm from Maplewood, Minnesota, and I am four and a half. I want to know why are rattlesnakes poisonous and why do they have a rattlesnake at the end of their tail?

I guess I'll touch on the poisonous and poisonous stingers. So as a reminder, snakes are venomous and they use their fangs actually to inject that venom and again it's because

because they want to try to capture their prey. And why do they have a rattle? So we heard a little bit of a rattle before, and the main reason they develop this rattle, it's believed to warn predators that they're getting too close. So if a predator is coming, a rattlesnake might rattle to let them know, hey, I'm here, and if you come any closer, I'm going to be forced to bite you. And rattlesnakes aren't

the only species actually that rattle. Well, they're only one that has a rattle, but other snakes shake their tail too. So it's believed that early on evolutionarily these snakes were shaking their tails before a rattle developed and as they shook them, especially in dry leaves, it would make this noise, this vibration noise, and it must have been good at deterring predators and perhaps that's why rattles, snakes got their rattles because it

it really amplifies that sound, makes it a bit louder. Rattlesnakes aren't born with a rattle, they're born with just a little segment that we call a prebutton. After the first time they shed it becomes a button which is just one little segment of a rattle. If they shake their tail it's still not going to make a rattle noise at that point. Every time they shed they add a segment to that rattle so the snake sheds from its head to its tail and a little portion

kind of clings off onto that rattle as a new segment. Those rattles are interlocking, so they kind of sit on top of each other. So when you get enough of them together and you move it, it shakes and makes that rattle noise. So a small rattlesnake, maybe one that's only shed two or three times, will have a really high, kind of quiet rattle. One that's shed 20 times, if it never broke its rattle, it's going to have a lot louder of a sound.

After we all got a look, we backed off to give the snake its space. And I asked Lisa some of your questions, starting with whether snakes lay eggs or have live babies. Some snakes lay eggs.

Some develop eggs in their bodies and they hatch inside their bodies and then they give birth and some snakes just give live birth. So rattlesnakes have a live birth strategy and yeah, it's really cool if you're ever there at the right time of year, you'll see a bunch of little young hanging around. The mom usually sticks around

maybe for about a week before she moves on. And that's not specifically to feed the babies or anything along those lines. But she'll move on before the babies do. Then the babies will follow her scent trail back to the den for the winter. My name is Nicholas. I am six years old. I live in Washington, D.C. And my question is, how do snakes feed their babies without poisoning their babies?

How do rattlesnakes feed their babies without putting venom in the babies? Sure, that's a great question. It brings up a good point that there's not a ton of maternal care with rattlesnakes. So it's not like mammals, which feed their babies with milk or birds that bring food to their young. You'll see little baby birds reaching up and crying for food. With

With rattlesnakes, once they're born, they're really on their own. They're pretty much born with those instincts and abilities to hunt, though. So, yeah, it's a pretty cool thing. If you think about humans, we rely on our parents to feed us cheese until we're, what, like four or five? But with rattlesnakes, no, they're on their own. Even with the ones with the eggs, you know, the mothers lay the eggs, and then they just leave. Four or five or 18, depending on the kids. Yeah, I know. I was thinking in my mind. I was like, well, I don't have kids, but, you know.

Speaking of venom, let's learn a little bit more about that. After we left the first site, where we had seen that juvenile rattlesnake, we went to another location a mile or so away to see if we could find any more. And while we were searching, we peppered Lisa with more questions. My name is Liam. I am seven years old.

And I am from New York City. How do snakes produce their venom? Hello, my name is Estelle and I live in California and I'm five years old. And my question is, how do snakes get their venom?

Hello, my name is Ian. I am nine years old. I live in Bethesda, Maryland. What's the difference between poison and venom? I'll start with the difference between venom and poison. A lot of people use these two terms interchangeably. If you told me or you had a question about a poisonous snake, I would know what you mean. But most of the snakes around here in the northeast are considered venomous. So what's the difference between poison and venom?

Really, it just has to do with the delivery method of those toxins. Poisons are something that you inhale, you ingest, or you absorb through your skin. Venoms are something that need to be actively delivered, either through a bite with fangs or injected by a stinger. So if you were poisoned by something, you probably picked something up that you shouldn't have and ate it. If you were envenomated, which is a term we use when venom gets into the body, you were probably bit by something.

And then how do snakes make that venom? This is a really complicated question and I'll do my best to try to describe it for you. So venom is kind of like a highly toxic saliva. You know, we make saliva which is spit in humans and we do that in salivary glands, right? And when we eat something, we tend to salivate and

we have saliva in our mouth and that saliva isn't just water. It helps actually break down some of the food before we swallow it because there are molecules known as enzymes and proteins in the mix.

So snake venom is again a lot like saliva. They make it in venom glands, which are essentially a modified salivary gland, which is at the back of the head. If you look at a venomous species, and this isn't a good indicator to determine non-venomous versus venomous species, but they do tend to have these big sacks of venom glands right on the side of the back of their head, and that's where they store it.

And similar to us, it's made up of that watery solution with proteins and enzymes. It just happens that they evolved over time to make some of those toxic. How do they use the venom? So they store them right in the back of their head and they have muscles back there as well. So when they bite into an animal, those muscles contract and push that venom forward through ducts and into the fangs. The fangs are actually hollow. When they bite down, they can push the venom into the animal and that's how they envenomate them.

I'm Aldrin from Spokane, Washington. Why do snakes have venom? Hi, my name is Jasper, and I'm six years old, and I live in Bell Canyon, California. Why do snakes have venom? My name is Henry, and I'm four years old, and I'm from Jupiter, Florida. My question is why snakes have venomous.

The main use of venom in venomous species is to immobilize their prey, and that does involve killing the prey. And immobilize means to make it stop moving. Yeah, to make it stop moving, exactly. So the big reason and advantage of this compared to non-venomous species is they don't have to struggle against something when they try to eat it because they don't have hands or legs to grasp onto something to put it into their mouth. They really are only relying on their mouth to bite and try to swallow something that's living, which...

can be really difficult. So again the advantage of venom is they can strike and bite first, they can let go and the animal will die shortly after and then they can follow the scent trail over to that prey item and they can swallow it while it's not struggling and trying to bite them.

My name is William. I'm six years old. I'm from Reno, Nevada. I want to know what do snakes eat. My name is Atticus. I'm from Suwannee, Georgia. I'm six years old and I want to know why some snakes have venom and others don't.

Why are some snakes venomous and others are not? Sure. So the best way for me to answer this is just to say that some evolved to have that venom and others just haven't made that adaptation. And I guess what I would say is that those other species have evolved other adaptations to eat their prey holes. So things like garter snakes, which don't have venom, they tend to just really bite onto something while it's still alive and swallow it while it's alive. And

yeah it doesn't work well for other species but garter snakes eat things like snails and slugs and tadpoles and frogs and lizards and maybe some mice which could be dangerous a mice could bite them but overall what they're eating there's not as much risk to it and then we talked about constriction before so constricting is another way they don't typically have venom they just rely on squeezing that animal to restrict the blood flow and the flow of oxygen which not

knocks them unconscious and kills them. And then similar to a venomous species, right? They eat that dead animal afterwards. Hi, I'm Rustin from North Louisiana. Why can't snakes eat by piece by piece? One of the other questions was why do snakes have to eat things whole?

Yeah, that's a great question, right? If you've ever watched a video about a snake eating something, especially if it's really much wider than the snake itself, it looks really uncomfortable, right? They have to open their mouths really wide and even once they swallow it, they end up with this huge bulge in their belly, which is probably pretty uncomfortable to move around with. So why don't they tear it up into pieces first and

The main reason for this is because they really just can't. Their teeth are not evolved to tear or rip or shred or mash things up. So they do the best with what they can. And they do have adaptations to help them swallow animals whole as well. So, for example, their jaws are really flexible and they aren't joined at the chin. They have actually two separate lower jaws. So that allows them to open their mouth really wide to fully get something in. They can kind of pull it in on either side using their jaw one at a time to

pull it into their body and then their body the skin's really pliable and flexible so it can fit that whole animal in there. My name is Dahlia, I'm seven years old, I'm from Woodland Hills, California. How do snakes smell with their tongues? My name is Agatha, I'm a six-year-old and I live in California. My question is why do lizards and snakes and other reptiles

stick their tongues out very often. How do snakes use their tongues? Yeah, that's a great question. When people think of snakes, they imitate snakes. They

stick their tongue in and out of their mouth. And why are they doing that, right? It doesn't really make much sense to be tasting the environment all the time, but there's a good reason for it. And I'll start by saying first that snakes do have nostrils. I know snakes, there are a lot of body parts that they're missing, but they have nostrils and they can breathe and they can smell to an extent through their nose.

but they really rely on their tongues for smelling and sensing in their environment. So every time they stick their tongue out, they're picking up odor molecules or scent particles and they're bringing them back into their mouth. And they have this special organ called a Jacobson's organ, which is at the top of their mouth.

And really that tongue just wipes those particles against that organ and signals sent to the brain, which allows them to sense the environment. So it gives them an idea of what's going on around them and their surroundings. It can be used to track prey, to find mates, maybe even just to know what predators are around. More snake questions coming right up, including how snakes move and why they don't have ears.

This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. And today we're out in Sullivan County, New York, with a biologist from the New York Department of Conservation looking for snakes.

Lisa Pepino specializes in reptiles and amphibians, and she really seems to like them. When Melody and I were out walking around with her trying to spot rattlesnakes, I kept getting excited about all the deer we were seeing. But Lisa only had eyes for the frogs and toads hopping across our path and the snakes we were searching for. So snakes are reptiles, but what specifically makes a snake a snake? A snake is a...

Cold-blooded animal means it's an ectotherm and it relies on heat and the temperature of the environment to survive. It's also a limbless reptile, so that's a pretty characteristic feature of a snake. It doesn't have arms or legs like a lot of other species do. Hi, my name is Maisie. I'm 10 years old. I live in Canberra, Australia, and I want to know how snakes slither on the ground without legs.

Hi, my name is Benjamin. I'm seven years old. I live in Alberta, Canada. Why don't snakes have legs? I can really just give a simple answer. It's that they don't need them. So to kind of talk about that a little bit more, if you've seen a snake move, right, it moves around the ground pretty quickly in those wave-like motions. And it's believed over time they've evolved. So some of their ancestors did actually have limbs and

You'll see this even today in some species, I believe like pythons and boas have these remnant vestiges, little limbs that start to develop, but they stop developing during development. And they have those down, it's like the hind limb of the animal. So at one point they probably did have limbs and for some reason over time they evolved not to have them. I don't know specifically why, but I would guess that some of their ancestors maybe

were more fossorial, meaning they lived underground. So maybe they lived in tunnels and it was beneficial to them not to have limbs because they kind of got in the way. And then if you think about, there are also species like constrictors who use their bodies to wrap loops around their prey, like some mammals. If they had legs, that would really get in the way. So it seems to benefit them not to have limbs and they seem to move fine without them. My name is Louis. I am seven years old. I'm from Kansas City.

And my question is, how do snakes move? My name is Teddy. I'm six years old. I'm from Berkeley, and I'm trying to learn how snakes move. Hi, I'm Marilla. I'm three years old. I'm from Fargo Park, New York. I want to know how snakes live. Hello!

My name is Parker from Northfield, Vermont. I'm seven years old and my question is how and why do snakes slither? That's a great question and I think it's probably one that most people have about snakes, right? They don't have arms or legs or hands or feet. So how in the world are they getting around and how do they move so quickly, right? Because they do move sort of fast and

To answer the question, I guess you'd have to think a little about the anatomy of a snake. Really, it's a combination of the bones, the muscles, and the scales that help them to move. Primarily, they have a really long spine. It goes pretty much from their neck all the way to the tip of their tail. And that spine has many vertebrae, many more than humans have, and those are the little bones that

that make up the spine. It allows it to be very flexible so you can see that wave-like pattern and that's a typical pattern that snakes use to get around. Have you ever looked at a skeleton of a snake? And if you haven't, I would suggest looking it up online. It's pretty cool. They also have a bunch of ribs lining their entire body and those ribs are covered in muscles like we just talked about and it's a combination of using those different muscle groups is how snakes push themselves forward. I guess I would

if I want to get into I would say that they would use their muscles and you might not notice this but really they push off of irregularities in the ground so things like little rocks or roots or even just a bump on the surface it allows them to kind of put the side of their body against it and to push off with the muscles.

And if you look at a snake from a side, their body isn't always fully pressed against the ground. So they lift some areas and they press down on others. And usually it's around that bendy area that they put their body down and press and push forward.

And the last thing I mentioned was the scales. The scales are also adapted for movement. So, you know, if you rub your hand down the belly of a snake, it's really quite smooth. They have these wide overlapping belly scales and that smoothness allows them to kind of glide along the surface. But if you run your hand up the belly of a snake, it's actually rather rough. And that kind of helps them from basically falling back down surfaces. And when they bend to side to side, it provides a little friction, which helps them to push forward. So,

Short answer, a combination of adaptations in the skeleton, the muscles, and the scales. Hi, my name's Aurora. I'm six years old. I live in Las Vegas, and my question is, how do snakes swim?

While we're talking about how they move, what about swimming? Some snakes really like to swim. Sure, so that's a great question. Maybe not everybody knows this, but all snakes can swim and some are better swimmers than others. So some are actually adapted to swimming like our sea snakes and crates and over time their tail has actually become like a paddle and they use that paddle to push themselves forward in the water. But

But what about more terrestrial or the species on land, those land snakes? Can they swim too? And the answer is yes, and they're pretty good swimmers. And we didn't really talk about this in movement, but there are different patterns of movement that snakes use.

The most frequent one is known as lateral undulation. It's a fancy term for slithering and really they just push their body side to side in this wave-like motion. That's the motion they use in swimming as well. So they push their body from side to side in the water and they can almost push off of those little waves at the bends of their body and then they use their tail for a little bit of propulsion as well. And you might think why doesn't a snake just sink, right? Not

you know, how come they're floating? Some float right above on the water surface and they have lungs like we do. Their lungs are a little bit different though. They have a really long right lung and they can just breathe in and inflate it and based on how much air is in there, they can swim under the water, they can swim with their head above the water, or they can swim almost entirely on the water's surface. So yeah, pretty good swimmers, surprisingly. That is cool. Here's a question from Amaya in Bangalore.

I am four years old. I want to know why snakes don't have ears.

Why don't snakes have ears? Snakes don't have external ears like a lot of animals do and even other reptiles a lot of them have what we call a tympanum which you can see it's kind of like our eardrum a hole with a covering over it. Snakes don't have that either so they have no external ears or eardrums but what they do have is an inner ear which we have as well so

Snakes evolved over time and again this might have to do with their ancestors maybe like I said before they were underground mostly so they didn't really need to spend that much time hearing they relied on their other other senses and maybe those ears got in the way but snakes today again they have inner ears and the way that they use them is that inner ear is connected to bones which ultimately connects to their jaw and that jaw can sense ground vibrations in the environment it's actually believed that it can sense

vibrations in the air too. So things like sound waves and that's how we hear as well right our sound waves they hit our eardrum goes to our inner ear and transmitted to the brain and becomes a signal or sound. So the same thing happens for snakes but they don't have the range of frequency that we do so they don't hear quite as well as we do but even though they don't have ears they probably do hear a small range of frequencies.

Hi, my name is Kira and I am from Boston, Massachusetts and I am nine years old.

My question is, why do snakes use heat vision? Some species do, some species don't. It's typically your pit vipers, and we have a few species of pythons and boas that have this specialized organ known as a pit or pit organ, which is on their face. So for pit vipers, it's kind of like an extra hole between their nostril and their eye, and they use that to sense heat in the environment, which is really cool, and it's a great tactic for them. The advantage being that

they can sense the heat signals coming off of animals or living organisms. So if a mouse runs by them, even if it's completely dark out, they see that as a heat signature, something a little bit brighter, so they can strike and capture that mouse at night, even if they can't visually see it, which is really cool. Same thing with predators. If something's coming up on them at night, they'll know it's there before they even get too close.

Hello, I am Hans. I am seven years old and I live in Maryland. When snakes wrap around their prey, wouldn't their belly hurt?

Why doesn't it hurt their stomach muscles when they wrap around an animal? Yeah, I thought this was a great question because it's something I've never ever thought about. You know, does it hurt their belly when they wrap themselves up? And I would say that they've adapted over time to use this method and it wouldn't hurt their belly in the way you think it would, right? They have a pretty strong pliable skin and scales which serve as a protecting layer from things like, you know, scratches or areas of the mammals that might go after them. But I would say that

It's possible still for their belly to get hurt. They usually tend to go after things like mammals, and mammals have teeth and claws, so if they get a good bite or scratch while they're constricting or while they're in the mode of trying to constrict an animal, that that would hurt them. But no, it doesn't hurt their belly in the way you might think it would. Maybe it tires out their muscles a little bit if they're constricting for a long time. Usually it should only take a few minutes, but if they don't get a good hold, maybe they're straining their muscles a while and it tires them.

My name is Iris. I'm four years old. Do snakes sleep? Can snakes sleep or do they sleep? I really like this question because it brings up a really cool feature about snakes and another part that they're missing is eyelids. So snakes don't have eyelids, meaning they can't shut their eyes or blink. So can they sleep and do they sleep? And the answer is yes, they do sleep. All animals really need to rest or sleep in some sort of fashion.

to survive basically. How long they sleep for, I'm not really sure that anybody knows, but they do sleep and they have to sleep with their eyes open and just

Just to bring back that eyelid thing, they do have a covering on their eyes. It's called a brill or a spectacle. It's clear though and they shed it every time they remove their skin. It just helps to keep the debris and dust out of their eyes. So if you see a snake that's just sitting, hanging out, really not moving too much, hard to say for sure if it's awake or asleep because its eyes will be open. And we had one more snake question.

My name is Ronan and I live in Georgia and I'm six years old. And I have a question. Why do snakes bite? Snakes bite to eat their food. But Ronan, maybe you want to know why snakes bite humans.

And the answer is because that's pretty much their only defense. They see a human as a predator. And I guess we kind of are, like if we come stomping into their territory or if we decide to pick them up. And if you think about it, a snake is kind of just a rope with a mouth. Those teeth are all they have as a way to tell us not to touch them. We actually asked Lisa whether it's okay or not to pick up snakes. And she said, probably not.

She explained when we found a garter snake, which she did pick up. This is the eastern or common garter snake. Probably a female, kind of chunky. Maybe she's gravid. And it's one of our most common species in New York. You find this really distributed throughout the state. She's, you know, not happy that I'm holding her here, but...

She is, you know, you saw I went and I kind of grabbed her. She hasn't bit or anything. She did musk on me, which musk is something that snakes use kind of as a defense mechanism. It's pretty stinky, and if something was trying to eat it, it probably might deter it from initially trying to do so. But yeah, I don't know if you guys can smell it. I can maybe put her down over in the grass here, not too far from where we found her.

The other defense mechanism snakes have is that they can musk on people and animals that pick them up. That means they kind of squirt out a liquidy substance that is not dangerous, but really stinks. And it's another warning to the human or the predator that we're stressing the snakes out and we shouldn't be picking them up. And even if we are careful when we pick up a snake, there's always a chance of hurting them.

So you should probably leave the snakes where they are and just observe them. The other thing to be wary of is there are snakes that have venom and can seriously hurt you if you pick them up or get too close. So you should learn about the snakes in your area. You should always be with an adult when you find a snake and don't pick one up if you don't know what kind of snake it is. Thanks so much to Lisa Pepino of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Special thanks as well to Jeff Wernick with the DEC.

That's it for this episode. If you have a question about anything, have an adult record it. It's easy to do on a smartphone using a free voice recording app. Then you can have your adult email the file to questions at butwhykids.org. I wish we could answer every question we got, but we have thousands of them, so it's really hard for us to get to all of them. Still, we love hearing from you and knowing what you're curious about, and it helps us decide what to do episodes on.

But Why is produced by Melody Beaudet and me, Jane Lindholm, at Vermont Public. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. We're distributed by PRX. We'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious. From PR.