Remember when your mom told you that a snake would come up and bite you if you sat on the toilet too long? If that's not a cautionary tale you grew up with, try this one on for size: Employees at a San Diego PR firm were terrorized by a snake that slithered out of their toilet this week.

Today in DON'T FUCK WITH SNAKES, a chef in southern China died when a spitting cobra he was preparing to cook bit him on the hand...20 minutes after he decapitated it. Chef Peng Fan was making snake soup—a regional specialty made with spitting cobra meat, which reportedly has "spectacular health benefits"—and was…

As many of us know, Lupita Nyong'o was featured on the the cover of Vogue's July issue, and the pictures in her spread were absolutely gorgeous. One of the most striking images was her intensely staring down a cobra that was a mere feet from her face.

Have you been hydrating today? Drink a lot of water and feeling like you have to go pee? Well, why not just pop into the bathroom for a sec and get some relief. OH, WAIT. NEVER MIND. YOU CAN'T BECAUSE THE BATHROOM IS FULL OF GIANT SNAKES.

Today in "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should," it's the Rattlesnake Rodeo—or, more accurately, the Rattlesnake Pile of Snakes Just Kind of Lying There—in Opp, Alabama. The annual event includes snake races, snake handling, snake milking, and snake touching.

New York designer Camille Zarsky makes python-skin handbags. She imports her materials from Europe, but she'd like to start sourcing a little closer to home, and she suspects she could even do a bit of ecological good—by making her products out of Florida pythons, Fast Company reports.

Snakes. Ssssssssnakessssssss. Some people swear by snakes, but other people foreswear snakes. Whatever your personal feelings about snakes, though, we can all probably agree that too many irresponsible people have decided to adopt pet snakes that either get too big, are actually poisonous, or slither into a drain…

I don't own anything nearly this fancy.

I guess the snake never carpooled to high school with a slightly older snake who informed it knowingly, over the chorus of Sublime's "What I Got," to "act like you're totally into it and NEVER use your teeth. Oh and this is sooo awkward but you owe me gas money."

Let’s start here: fucking Florida. What a wet, wild, and all around icky place it is, you know? Florida is basically a big swamp surrounded by sand and populated almost exclusively with retired people, drug lords, rednecks, and dangerous exotic animals that entrepreneurial Floridians have decided to import into the…

An earnest 17-year-old intern recently attended an Appropriations Committee hearing at the Connecticut state Capitol to testify about a program that helped her come out of her shell and get over her fear of snakes.

So remember that part in Jurassic Park after the brachiosaurus sneezed on the girl, when Sam Neill discovers that even though all the dinosaurs are female, they are somehow reproducing? Well now, your favorite snake, the copperhead viper IS DOING THAT SHIT FOR REAL. An ecologist at the University of Tulsa has…

Spiders are creepy! I mean, they are kind of neat, but mostly they cause people to scurry away in fear and sometimes even emit high-pitched shrieks. Well, if you are one of the people who can't stand those little multi-legged crawlers, you might be in luck. A new study has found that it is possible to turn people from…

Unlike many people her age, the amazing Dame Judi Dench, who's 76, is not thinking about retiring:

If you had 25 quick-breeding Australian flying squirrels in your living room, you might feel a little overwhelmed. Which is why Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation decided to hold an Exotic Pet Amnesty Day, where owners of such squirrels as well as pythons, boas, turtles, geckos, and giant chameleons could turn…

Imagine if you got pregnant a couple of years after having sex with a dude? Imagine if you got pregnant without ever having sex? An eastern diamond rattlesnake recently gave birth five years after mating. She just stored the sperm until she felt like it was the right time. Even crazier, a female copperhead snake that…