Though at first glance the snakes seem haphazardly arranged, there’s one key regularity. Wherever snakes cross, they cross perpendicular to each other, with the snakes either vertical and horizontal or 45 degrees rotated. The crossings all indicate either addition or multiplication signs, and each snake is an equation.

To read off the math, Hunters had to start with the head. Every snake has a different number of stripes near its head, giving both the order of the snakes and their values in the math. A snake’s number sentence also started with the number by its head. Then, starting with the head and reading towards the tail, every crossing added an operation and another integer to the equation, which could then be evaluated, order of operations considered.

The calculation for snake zero is shown below.

In order, the six snakes gave 12, 5, 13, 15, 14, and 19, which, mapping A to 1 and Z to 26, translates to LEMONS, the final answer.