I don’t know if anyone else noticed this, but Maddy usually shines the most in scenes with Cassie, and most of her strongest moments are tied to that dynamic. I honestly feel like Sydney Sweeney creates a very natural acting environment for Alexa Demie.
Even though Sydney has a lot more acting experience, their scenes together feel effortless, almost like Sydney subtly guides the emotional flow of the scene and gives Alexa space to fully settle into the character.
When Maddy interacts with some of the other characters, the chemistry and rhythm don’t always feel as natural to me compared to her scenes with Cassie.
That snake is scared of falling. In a 2014 study, biologists rigged a fake tree trunk with pressure sensors and watched five snake species climb it. Every single snake gripped the trunk about three times harder than it had to.
The paper, in Biology Letters, gave a clear answer. A climbing snake will spend extra energy to keep from slipping.
A snake has no arms, no claws, and none of the sticky toepads that let geckos hang upside down on glass. The whole climb runs on muscle. A python or a boa has between 200 and 400 spine bones (humans have 33), and the muscles along its ribs squeeze in slow waves. One section grips the bark hard while the other section stretches up, anchors, and pulls the rest of the body forward. Biologists named this motion “concertina locomotion,” after the accordion. It is hard work and it is slow. The snake in the video is moving at roughly 2% of its own body length each second. If a six-foot man climbed a rope at that pace, he would cover about an inch and a half per second.
Greg Byrnes, the snake biologist who led the 2014 study, told National Geographic why his snakes burned so much extra energy holding on: “For a snake, being safe is way, way more important than being cost-effective.” A 30-foot fall probably will not kill the snake. But it lands the snake back on the forest floor, where ground predators are watching. It also means starting the climb over.
The overgrip is a quiet bargain. Burn some energy now, or risk getting eaten later.
In 2021, scientists at Colorado State and Cincinnati discovered a brand-new climbing mode. Brown tree snakes were tying their bodies into a single big loop and inching up smooth poles, almost like a lasso pulling itself up a flagpole. The team called it “lasso locomotion.” It lets the snake climb cylinders more than twice as wide as the older method allowed. It also explains how brown tree snakes have been climbing power poles in Guam and knocking out the electricity.
What looks scary in the video is mostly a snake doing the math on every grip. Most days, that careful overgrip is the only reason a body that long stays in the canopy.