Andrew Hamblin, the 22-year-old pastor of Tabernacle Church of God, a snake-handling church of Appalachia in LaFollette, Tenn., preaches with a Canebrake/Timber Rattlesnake during service on November 21, 2013.GRAY, Tenn. – The remains of dozens of poisonous snakes confiscated from a Tennessee preacher have been sent to a museum for research.
The 53 frozen carcasses were given to East Tennessee State University’s Natural History Museum at Gray. The museum is planning to use their bones for scientific study.
“We are always in need of good skeletons of modern animals,” Stephen Wallace, the museum’s curator of vertebrates, told the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Things can be learned from snakes that have been bred or lived in captivity that cannot be learned from those that have lived in the wild, Wallace said.
“For example, an animal that has lived in a zoo will live longer than one in the wild, and its bones can show such things as arthritis or old age,” he said.