[HPforGrownups] Re: JKR's Single Biggest Error

[Vivamus]

No: HPFGUIDX 124046

> > Vivamus (snipped):
> > All right, I'll bite, but my nomination is a group of errors.  
> > Ignorance of snakes.  
> > 
> > 1. No snake that has ever lived, AFAIK, could chomp on someone like 
> > the snake that bit Arthur Weasley.  She describes the snake 
> > splintering bones with it's bite, which snakes' jaws are not 
> > physically capable of doing.
> 
> Dungrollin:
> I've been researching this, recently (it was me in post 
> 115333), and I think that Bushmasters can strike hard enough 
> to break bones, though I can't find a specific reference for 
> you to prove it.  
> Snakes generally leave half their length coiled on the ground 
> and strike with the other half of their length, a tube of 
> solid muscle 6ft long would, I think be able to provide 
> enough force to break a few ribs.  Moreover, I found some 
> info on WebMed Health to suggest that a bite from a 
> non-poisonous snake can break bones, so I don't see why 
> poisonous snakes shouldn't be able to.
> (Hope these links work - if not you should be able to cut and paste.)
> 
> http://my.webmd.com/hw/health_guide_atoz/sig241206.asp
> 
> Moreover, bushmasters are known to deliver more than one bite 
> in a single attack. I don't see the bite as such (i.e. the 
> pressure of the jaws being brought together and crushing the 
> ribs between them) splintering the bones, but the force of 
> the strike on a man's unprotected ribs could easily crack 
> them as a sledgehammer would.

Vivamus:
Yes, I'm quite sure that ANY 12-foot long snake, poisonous or otherwise, can
break bones with the impact of their strike (with the exception of cobras,
but see below.)  I've been hit with a defensive strike from a roughly 4 foot
boa, and that *hurt*, and it wasn't attacking, just saying, "get away from
me."   That's not the way the attack on Arthur was described, however.  Here
is the quote:

"he reared high from the floor and struck once, twice, three times, plunging
his fangs deeply into the man's flesh, feeling his ribs splinter beneath his
jaws, feeling the warm gush of blood. The man was yelling in pain; then he
fell silent; he slumped backwards against the wall; blood was splattering on
to the floor."

First of all, you are correct in pointing out that it was three strikes, not
four.   

Second, though, note the "reared high from the floor".  The only snakes that
do that, AFAIK, are cobras.  Cobra strikes are fairly slow and gentle
compared to almost every other kind of snake.   Most snakes don't actually
coil to strike; they coil to sleep, to crush their victims (if
constrictors,) or around tree limbs for support, etc.  Before striking, most
snakes make an "S" of their bodies, with larger and larger loops of the S
farther back from the head.   That lets the strike come very fast and with a
great deal of power, as all the loops unbend towards the victim.  A
rattlesnake strike is not faster than the eye can follow, but it is *very*
fast (around 8 feet per second), and many other snakes strike faster still.


Cobra strikes, OTOH, involve the cobra rearing up several feet high, and
basically falling forward onto the victim.  No driven strike speed at all.
By the time it gets to ground level, it's going pretty fast, but nothing
like the speed of a rattlesnake strike.  I would not want to try it, but a
person with very fast reflexes can actually catch a cobra's hood (or even
head) in mid strike.  If you have seen Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, those
are real cobras he grabs.  I'm sure the fangs were pulled, but he did do
that with real snakes.

I saw Bill Haas at the Miami Serpentarium do the daily snake milking once,
many years ago.  The world record King Cobra was dead and stuffed by that
time, but he still milked one that was over nine feet long.   We were
standing on the lawn, and the snake container (a flat, round thing several
feet across) was set down in the grass about eight feet in front of us.  No
fences, walls, or glass.  He lifted the lid off of the container, and a King
Cobra rose out of that box high enough to look me straight in the eye.  It
happened to be looking at the crowd, not at Bill, so he tapped it with a
stick to get it's attention.  It hissed loudly and turned to him, and he
started his lecture on it.  When he was ready to milk this huge snake, he
stuck one hand about two feet from its nose.  The snake lunged at his hand,
but before it had gotten halfway there, he had grabbed it by the hood with
his other hand.  The entire snake then wrapped up around his arm, with some
getting around his neck (which he could easily pull off, since was just the
tail.)  The milking then proceeded quickly and easily.  Getting it back in
the box was more tricky, but as I recall, he just took the snake's head in
his other hand, slowly unwound himself from the coils, let it get a couple
of loops onto the bottom of the box, and then just lowered the box lid on
it.  As soon as he let go of the head, the snake dropped down until it could
be in its defensive position (about five feet high, with full hood.)  In
that position, when he put the lid down, the snake couldn't do anything but
coil back down into the box.

Anyway, that is how a cobra attacks.  I think there are some other hooded
snakes (Australian Tiger Snake and another common Australian snake I can't
recall, I think), but I don't know if they attack by rearing as a cobra
does, but they might.  The whole purpose of the hood is as a warning device,
so that would be the way to display it.  BTW, the cobras and other hooded
snakes have among the deadliest venom of all snakes.  King cobra venom isn't
as deadly as some others, but it is injected in huge quantities, so it might
as well be.

So we have two kinds of snakes, the rearing cobra type and the "coiling"
Bushmaster type.  There are other kinds, but let's stick with these for a
minute.  As an interesting aside, Silvana just mentioned that Nagini is the
name of a Snake Goddess.  As Naga is the Sanskrit word for cobra, with the
feminine form Nagini, I would be willing to bet that any Indian Snake
Goddess is going to be a cobra.  Indian mythology has a *lot* of snake
beings -- so many and in so many variants that JKR could have pulled the
name from almost anywhere, but it still almost certainly is either a cobra
or cobra-like.  (Note: many of the forms of Naginis are pythons
[non-poisonous constrictors], but as Nagini is clearly venomous, they
wouldn't likely apply.)

So Nagini is *most* likely a cobra, hence the rearing.  JKR did say the
snake reared, so it could not possibly have hit Arthur hard enough to break
bones, let alone splinter, crush, cause blood to spatter, etc.

Let's assume, however, the "reared" part was the error, the cobra name is
irrelevant, and it really is a Bushmaster type.  Let's further assume that
the snake, in biting three times, backed up, "coiled" up, and hit with full
force, rather than just backing up a few inches for the second and third
strikes, the way most snakes would do.  Let's assume (very small assumption
here) that a 12 foot snake can break a rib with a strike, maybe even crack
multiple ribs with three strikes.  

Assuming all that, it is still a blunt trauma on the OUTSIDE of his body,
and only two tiny punctures through the skin for each strike.  So where does
the gushing blood come from?  Bones that splintered so badly from the three
strikes that they pierced arteries AND cut the skin?  While that is unlikely
in the extreme, you still have the "warm gush of blood" flowing in the mouth
of the snake.  You also have the bones splintering "beneath his jaws", which
really does not fit with the blunt trauma a straight-on strike would
produce, no matter how much you stretch it.
 
> Vivamus:
> > 2. No matter how big Nagini is, there is no way a venomous snake is 
> > going to be big enough to eat a 14 year old boy.
> 
> Dungrollin:
> Agreed. However, in the graveyard Voldy doesn't specifically 
> say anything about feeding Harry to Nagini, he says rather 
> vaguely "Just a little longer, Nagini" which, to be honest, 
> could refer to anything at all.
> 
> It's in chapter 29: The Dream where he says it explicitly: 
> "Nagini [...] you are out of luck.  I will not be feeding 
> Wormtail to you, after all ..." - But it might be significant 
> that he's talking to Wormtail, and a rat *would* be just the 
> right sized snack.

Vivamus:
Y'know, I never thought about feeding Wormtail to Nagini as a rat, but of
course that would fit Nagini's size.  Since Wormtail is an animagus,
however, I wonder whether even LV could force him into his animal form and
keep him there.  I think it would be very different from forcing Wormtail to
change from rat back into human, as Remus and Sirius did.  

Your quote was also snipped a bit prematurely, I think.  To extend your
quote a bit:

"Nagini," said the cold voice, "you are out of luck.  I will not be feeding
Wormtail to you, after all... but never mind, never mind . . . there is
still Harry Potter. ..."  The snake hissed. Harry could see its tongue
fluttering.

The full quote says to me that LV intends to feed Harry Potter to Nagini
instead of PP.  A little later, when Harry is describing the dream to DD, he
says,

"Voldemort got a letter from an owl.  He said something like, Wormtail's
blunder had been repaired.  He said someone was dead.  Then he said,
Wormtail wouldn't be fed to the snake - there was a snake beside his chair.
He said - he said he'd be feeding me to it, instead."

So Harry also hears it as LV intending to feed HIM to the snake.  In the
graveyard scene of GoF, LV also tells Nagini to have patience, in a way that
suggests that Nagini is waiting to claim the promise of being able to eat
Harry.  Nagini, which has been circling Harry continuously, goes back to
wait until after LV kills Harry.

All in all, it's pretty clear, I think, that JKR was thinking that Nagini
was going to eat 14-year-old Harry.


> Vivamus:
> > 3. People don't, usually, bleed when bitten by a poisonous snake.  
> > In fact, they don't usually bleed when bitten by a non-poisonous 
> > snake, except for defensive bites, which the attack on Arthur 
> > certainly was not.
> > 
> > I've heard someone say that Nagini must be a Bushmaster.  It's 
> > possible, as Bushmasters get up to almost four meters in 
> length, and 
> > Nagini is described as being over twelve feet long.
> 
> Dungrollin:
> Yup, that was me (post 115333 again).  And I'm going to 
> disagree again; L. muta venom has neurotoxic, cardiotoxic, 
> myotoxic, anticoagulant and haemorrhagic effects, here's a 
> list of symptoms:
> 
> Edema (swelling) & Pain
> Haemorrhage (gingival [gums], wound, rectal) Blister 
> formation around wound site Abdominal pain (intense colic) 
> Bloody diarrhea Hypotension (diastolic & systolic) 
> Bradycardia Diminished heart sounds Brief loss of 
> consciousness Blurry vision Dizziness Vomiting 
> 
> http://www-surgery.ucsd.edu/ent/DAVIDSON/Snake/Lachesis.htm
> 
> Haemorrhaging from the site of envenomation (the bite) is 
> quite common with Crotaline snake bites (rattlesnakes, water 
> moccasins, Fer-de-Lance etc) though all these symptoms (from what I've
> discovered) are very variable, and depend very much on how 
> much venom was injected.

Vivamus:
All you say there is true, however, it does not result in anything like the
passage describes. The haemorrhagic effects would take a matter of minutes
to appear, at the very least.  The book clearly has the blood flowing in
great quantities from the instant of the attack, as if the attack came from
a lion instead of a snake.  If you get bitten by a poisonous snake, you are
going to have two tiny punctures, and that's it.  Other effects, including
death, would come later.

I share the view that JKR is a genius of a writer, and I dearly love the
books, and greatly enjoy all of them.  No writer, however brilliant, can
master all subjects.  That's what the editorial process is for, to catch
things like this.

The passages with the snakes still make me wince, however, and there is no
way I've seen yet in which they can be reconciled.  The closest way around
it is to write off Nagini as an entirely magical creature, with all kinds of
hidden magical abilities.  Then you can justify anything, because neither
logic nor science applies.

> Vivamus before:
> But Bushmasters (Lachesis mutus) have
> > extremely powerful hemotoxin in their venom, and the larger a snake 
> > is, the more venom it can inject.  With all the time it took to get 
> > McGonagall and get to DD's office, Arthur would have been 
> long since 
> > dead by the time they got to DD.  I'm not counting this one as an 
> > error, because we don't really know what kind of snake it was, but 
> > most venomous snakes of that size would have killed Arthur 
> too quickly 
> > for help to arrive.
> > 
> 
> > Vivamus later:
> > I think it still is a FLINT, though, and here is why. One would 
> > expect that the venom from a magical giant snake would be no less 
> > deadly than that of a non-magical snake. TR did tell Harry in CoS 
> > that he had about a minute to live after the Basilisk fang got 
> > him. Whatever Nagini is might not be as deadly as a Basilisk, but
> > it  must have been ten minutes at the very least after seeing the 
> > attack that Harry & co. could even have gotten to DD's office, and 
> > probably another ten before anyone could physically have gotten to 
> > Arthur to help him, and probably another ten minutes after that 
> > before he could get any kind of treatment. The snake bit him four 
> > times, so he probably got a full load of venom from a 12+ foot 
> > long snake. Arthur would be dead long before anyone could get 
> > there.
> >
> > (To put it in perspective, there are some snakes that can kill an 
> > adult in a matter of seconds.)
> 
> Dungrollin:
> I disagree (for a change...).  Venomous snakes can very 
> finely judge the amount of venom they inject - we simply don't
> know how much Arthur got (and by the way it was only three bites, 
> not four), and the Basilisk undoubtedly injected a hell of a lot 
> more venom than Nagini would be able to. I've seen some case studies 
> on the web where people were bitten by bushmasters and didn't 
> receive treatment for 2 hours, 5 hours and more, and they all 
> survived.
> 
> "There are many factors that influence the seriousness of a bite, 
> including the individual's health, size, age, and psychological 
> state.  The nature of the bite may also vary, like penetration of 
> one or both fangs, amount of venom injected, location of the bite, 
> and proximity to major blood vessels. The health of the snake and 
> the interval since it last used its venom mechanism is also 
> important. These multiple variables make every bite unique. 
> Depending on circumstances, the bite of a 'mildly' venomous snake 
> may be life-threatening and that of a 'strongly' venomous snake may 
> not."
> 
> http://www.manbir-online.com/htm2/snake.22.htm
> 
> I stick to my deduction that Nagini (on the basis of the information 
> we have) is a bushmaster.  I don't think she's a magical snake
> - what we've seen her do so far requires no magic at all.

Vivamus:

Bushmaster is as good a candidate as any, if we rule out cobra and ignore
the rearing and the name.  They do have diamond patterns on their tail, as
JKR describes, they are the largest of all vipers, and they are unusually
aggressive.  They eat mammals, from mice and rats(!) to opossums.  There is
still a problem, though, with the examples you give.  

Their bites result in an over 80% mortality rate.  That translates to a very
deadly snake, as some bites are going to be made by sick individuals who
can't produce as much or as deadly venom, some will have already spent their
venom, some will make glancing bites that only partly penetrate the skin
through the clothing and can't get enough venom in, and so on.  Some bites
will happen where people can get medical help right away.  Overall, 80% of
people bitten ending up dead is *very* high.

Unlike a wild snake, Nagini is probably a very healthy animal, because she
is an active snake in uncaged captivity, getting plenty of exercise, and
probably all the food she wants.  Assuming she is no longer being milked,
because LV now has his body, we have a healthy animal, with a full load of
fully deadly venom, over 12 feet long (close to or at world record size), of
a species that averages 8 to 9 feet.

True, snakes can control the amount of venom they can inject, but this snake
is being controlled by LV, and really wants to kill Arthur before he can
raise an alarm.  With three bites, there is no reason to expect that Arthur
would have gotten anything less than a record  load of fully deadly venom --
probably enough to kill several healthy adults fairly quickly.

> But you were originally criticising JKR for not having done enough 
> research... I'm trying to track down a paraphrased quote posted ages 
> ago:
> 
> "JKR was asked if there was anything in PS/SS she wished she could 
> go back and  change. She said that at the time it was published, she 
> thought boa constrictors were poisonous."
> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/31778
> 
> Unfortunately I've had no luck so far - if anyone knows the quote 
> I'd be very very grateful for a reference (it's not on QQQ or Madame 
> Scoop). I think that JKR wanted the boa constrictor in PS/SS to be 
> Nagini, then realised her error and had to abandon it. But after 
> making an error like that, you'd be certain to do your research 
> properly the next time around, wouldn't you?  Well, I would. So I 
> stick with my 'Nagini is a bushmaster' theory. (No, hang on,
> that's not very catchy, how about N.O.B.B.Y - Nagini Obviously a 
> Bushmaster, Beware, Young'uns!)

Vivamus:
I remember that vaguely, and it bothered me that anyone would think that boa
constrictors were poisonous, probably because I learned about snakes before
I ever went to school.  My grandfather was an avid (amateur) herpetologist,
and my father was not, but grew up in an area in which he encountered
poisonous snakes nearly every day, and taught his children to know about
snakes before going into the woods.  I'm no expert, but I might have
overestimated common knowledge about snakes, or underestimated how much I've
picked up about them over the years.


All in all, I think you are still stuck with three theories for Nagini, and
all of them involve FLINTs of some sort.  She is either

1. a Bushmaster, in which the rearing to strike, the crushing of ribs, the
flow of blood, and Arthur not being dead in about five minutes are all
FLINTS.  The name Nagini (Sanskrit for female cobra) also doesn't fit a
Bushmaster (South American).

2. a King Cobra, in which the crushing of ribs, the flow of blood, and
Arthur not being dead in about TWO minutes are all FLINTS.  The rearing to
strike and the name Nagini DO fit, however.

3. a completely magical snake creature, which uses its dragon like jaws to
crush and kill its victims, and has secondary fangs that are venomous, but
not terribly so -- enough to kill Arthur eventually, but not soon.  The
FLINT is, Nagini looks like a snake, and snakes have these thin, skinny
lower jaws, with no jaw muscles to speak of.  That's so they can get their
mouths around their food by unhinging their jaws.  If she had real jaws that
could do those things, she would not look like a snake at all, but like some
kind of dragon without wings and legs.  In fact, she wouldn't BE a snake,
either, because she wouldn't eat her food the way all snakes do.


But it's time to stop beating around the bush and give JKR some kind of
wiggle room, in the off-chance she reads this kind of thing and worries
about it.  Let's find a way around this that doesn't involve any FLINTs.

Perhaps Nagini is, in fact, the REAL Nagini, an actual Indian magical being,
not just a super-intelligent snake, or even a magically-enhanced snake
creature. (As beautiful as they are, and as good as they are about escaping
and getting through small spaces, snakes are really very stupid animals.)
Nagini could then look like a huge, but ordinary cobra most of the time.
When she bites, though, she chomps down like a dragon and NOT like a cobra,
with venom that kills slowly instead of quickly.  Hence the attack on
Arthur, the poison not killing him quickly, the ease getting her in and out
of the MoM, her intelligence in coming to Harry because she has been told
she can eat him, her patience in waiting when she is told "not yet", etc.

We don't know anything about her origins other than the hint from her name,
but you can bet LV didn't find her in the forests of Albania.  How he got
her isn't relevant, probably, but what if she is one of those magical beings
LV consorted with long ago?

Maybe that is the only way Nagini can be explained.  Well, if it is, then I
don't see a FLINT at all (though it is awkward, to say the least.)

Hmmmmmmmmm.  Remember how much trouble they had staunching the blood flow?
Perhaps she is more magical than she appears, after all.


 
> Dungrollin
> Apologising to Vivamus if he's(?) an expert on this, in which case 
> I'll defer to superior knowledge gracefully.

Not an expert; just love snakes.  And it's a good discussion.  No apology
necessary.
 
> My pet gripe is the whole of GoF, and why Fake!Moody wasted a whole 
> year when he could have given Harry a portkey at any time.

I don't think LV was ready.  PP asked him a similar question, and he
essentially said, I have to get stronger before doing that.

Remember how the Dark Mark was getting steadily stronger all year?  Thaat
had to mean that LV was getting stronger, didn't it?  I think LV wasn't
ready until nearly the third task.  Having Harry snatched at his moment of
triumph was just LV's way of saying, "in your face" to DD, I think.

Vivamus