So-called experts have alleged for nearly a century (and maybe longer) that baby rattlesnakes are more venomous and more dangerous than the species’ full-grown adults. The first known instance of this factoid was attributed to no less an authority than the owner of Florida’s Reptile Leather company, Roy Montgomery, who claimed to the Miami Tribune in 1936 that venom from a “baby rattler” was “thinner and far more potent.” As if. Not a chance. Unfounded allegations against these young rattlers have been remarkably persistent, according to William Hayes, a biology professor at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California. Hayes—whose new study in the journal Toxins tracked these claims—found that roughly half of college-aged students in the American West had heard variations of this deceptive myth. Specifically, about 48.2% of college students surveyed in the Northwest and about 52.6% in the Southwest had heard versions of the assertion that baby rattlesnakes are more dangerous because they “have not learned to control the amount of venom they inject when biting and therefore inject more.” In reality, per Hayes’s ongoing research, the volume of rattlesnake venom deployed in an attack increases “exponentially” as these snakes mature and the length of their bodies grow. Baby rattlesnakes, by contrast, deliver less venom in their bites, whether during predatory or defensive strikes. And, contrary to wilderness lore, these juveniles can also control the volume of venom delivered in their attacks.