snake

If you happen to be Indiana Jones or your oldest memory involves waking up in a giant garden paradise, there’s a good chance you find snakes quite repugnant. But even if you’d sooner take a kick to the groin than so much as look at a snake, we have a feeling you’ll find the squirmy little guy in this video quite adorable.

Many people have an instinctive reaction of disgust to snakes, imagining them as being slimy, gross, or simply dangerous creatures. It’s true that, being cold-blooded reptiles, snakes are cold to the touch, but their scales are smooth and shiny and really quite lovely to run your hand over. And just look how cute they can be!

This video clip caught by a snake owner in Japan has been making the rounds on Twitter this week, with nearly 8,000 retweets and over 11,000 favourites.

▼ Yaaaaawn!

https://twitter.com/sunkaki1224/status/654174072293556224

In truth, most of the time when snakes “yawn” it’s to stretch or re-align their jaws, so it’s probably not the case that this little guy has been staying up all night watching too many DVD box-sets. But even so, few could deny that he’s a special kind of cute. Plus, when you take a still shot of him with his mouth open and throw in some text…

Screen Shot 2015-10-15 at 11.14.29

…you get a great little “O RLY”-style pic.

While there are certainly fanged and poisonous snakes out there that you should give a wide berth, there are plenty of harmless varieties, like the corn snake, which make wonderful pets with plenty of interesting quirks. Give snakes a chance, guys—some of them are really quite cute!

Source & images: @sunkaki1224 on Twitter