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Scientific Spell of the Snake Charmer By Rick Gregory Have you ever been enchanted by the magic of the snake charmer? Is it a mystical charade? What caused a group of California students to fall under a reptilian trance in the Seribuat Archipelago in Southeast Asia?
Addressing a roomful of pre-medical students destined to be doctors and dentists, Lee Grismer offers a slightly different challenge for the young undergraduates intent on a career with life-saving potential: “Of course when you’re a doctor you might have a chance to save human lives, but imagine being able to save an entire ecosystem.” Lee Grismer believes wholeheartedly in his profession, his research and his calling as a herpetologist. And he shares that enthusiasm with anyone lucky enough to venture into the field with him day or night. 
As a biology professor at La Sierra University in Riverside, California, a small private institution that channels many students to medical school, he has conducted a tropical field biology course in a smattering of 32 islands of the east coast of Malaysia. "The class taught me how to not be afraid and get involved with nature,” adds Shamyne Hover, a pre-med student who managed to overcome her fear of snakes by catching two specimens in the jungles of Malaysia. Another student summed up Grismer's snake charmer style: "He utilizes a hands-on approach to learning that makes it so much more vital, comprehensive and valuable to students.” Leading groups into swamps, rattan patches, and steep forested trails, Grismer, a pillowcase strapped to his belt for carrying snakes, sets the tone with his laser-like intensity and his vast patience to push his charges to their physical limits in the tropic heat. Guiding twenty freshmen students on a research expedition may seem fruitless to some, but Grismer begs to differ, “It might get crowded, but imagine what you can find having twenty pairs of eyes in the field.” With eyes and minds wide open, some of the La Sierra students found more than just wildlife in their tropical experiences. “I have learned to look at life differently after this trip,” reflects Joanna Bernard. “Before going to Tioman Island, my major was pre-law. Now I am thinking about going into the biology field. That’s how great an impact this trip had on me.” “I signed up for the class to perform some real science in the field,” says Perry Wood, a physical therapy major who started helping out in the research lab. “I thought of making a career out of [herpetology] and this experience did that.” In the preface of his book recounting 25 years of work in Baja California, Professor Grismer confesses to having “an inescapable passion for herpetology” as the snake charmer spirit took hold. Growing up in the dry lands of southern California, he chased lizards around the house before learning about rattlesnakes, iguanas and sea turtles from his bush pilot father working in Mexico. At age four he flew with his dad to the deserts of Baja to see these fascinating reptiles and “all I could think about for the next forty years was finding out what they were.” Tioman Island has been a favorite stopover for wayfaring explorers for centuries and still remains a favorite destination for divers and other tourists. Most of the other islands in the archipelago are not as large and do not share Tioman’s habitat diversity: coastal mangroves, dipterocarp hill forests, and ridge top forests on mountain summits.  Tioman has so far been spared from the over-zealous logging afflicting the smaller islands. Hence, it remains the flagship island in the South China Sea with the best intact primary forest covering its rugged interior that has yet to be fully discovered. Grismer and his students for their efforts have found new species, several new records and published dozens of professional papers in scientific journals. An exceptional feat for undergraduates fulfilling a freshmen level biology course. Each jungle excursion is punctuated by frenzy and calmness. On sighting of a prized species, students waste no time surrounding tree trunks, arming blowguns, eyeballing targets and diving onto the forest floor to secure a fallen specimen. Once in hand, there is no rush. Each characteristic of the rainforest animal is shown and discussed in detail. “This is Draco melanopogon,” says Grismer stretching out its skin, “it’s a gliding lizard found in primary and secondary forests and it flies from one tree to another using this ribbed membrane - a ptagium – that extends laterally to form an aerodynamic surface." "This species has a black ptagium with yellow spots. And notice that the flap of skin on the throat, called a dewlap, is also black in males and used to attract females.” For students, every stout tree stem, every mottled boulder and every fragment of the tropical rainforest is a potential teaching moment for the snake charmer:
- a brown, blotchy Kendall’s Rock Gecko (Cnemaspis kendallii) dissolving into patchy bark;
- a thin, green Oriental Whip Snake (Ahaetulla prasina) camouflaged against arboreal vines;
- or a Saffron-Bellied Frog (Chaperina fusca) hidden in a small pool of rainwater collected in a tree knob.
It is a classroom with greater dimensions and better understanding because nature is absorbed day and night and recorded directly into memory. 
“The whole experience will stay with me for the rest of my life,” says Shamyne Hover. “This course offers everything from amazing instructors, intellectual insight, travel, and an opening of the mind to new and different ways of life.” Although research objectives of the project are paramount, Grismer is fully aware of the implications for conservation. “If we take a specimen out of the wild, then we try to maximize its value, otherwise it’s a waste,” he preaches to students in a room set-up as a makeshift lab for preparing museum collections. When asked about the value of collecting wild animals versus leaving them in their natural habitats, he uses the analogy of a library to clarify his conservation approach: If you really want to conserve the forest and do some good, then you have to think past protected areas. It’s like building a library and stacking it full of books. The forest is the library and the species are the books. What good is that library if you don’t read those books? What good is this forest to us if we really don’t go in and study it? How are we going to manage it if we really don’t understand the species? We need to go in and read these books. There is a lot of history written in the DNA of these animals. We need to take them out of the wild to prove their value for effective management. The amount of data obtained out of a specimen may eventually lead to saving the species. |
As teachers and mentors we’ve got to tell our students what’s up, we’ve got to teach them to constantly keep asking questions,” Grismer explains during a talk to the Malaysian Nature Society. “The way we manage our environment in the next 50 to 100 years is going to impact every single species on the planet, and now is the time to start asking questions and have them teach each other what’s the perfect question to ask. Despite marine park status, Tioman Island and its neighbors in the Seribuat Archipelago are not out of harm’s way. Tourists continue to flock to these exotic tropical destinations in greater numbers and hotels and other facilities, like airstrips, are being built to accommodate them. Of immediate concern are plans to construct a roadway cutting across the island’s midsection and its ecological core and is a constant threat to the existing biodiversity. It is exactly with this point in mind that drives Grismer to share his work with others. “We can’t have a bunch of isolated groups with their own agendas bickering with each other. We have to work together as a team,” he declares. "And that’s why I’m so happy to be able to come over here and sponsor Malaysian students. This cooperation is what’s going to solve the problem and make things work.” Most of the La Sierra medical students may never again hear the call to the jungle. But they will remember being drawn into the heart of a tropical rainforest to feel the beat of a living organism. One far larger than the patients they will care for in the near future. Saving an ecosystem is quite an enormous task for anyone, but first you must be captivated enough to feel its pulse. And Grismer, the snake charmer, will not let anyone leave the island until they undergo this enchanted transformation.
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