Indian Wildlife Club Forum

Ophiophobia may not be a commonly used word. It summarizes everything about an animal that was revered in ancient societies and became detested with time.

Of all the animals we come in contact with, be it animals in the wild or in human settlement areas, majority of them hurt us physically or damage our assets. Dogs, cats, cows, elephants, crows, all chase and attack us. But there is one animal that does neither and strives to stay away from us as much as possible yet we kill them at every possible opportunity. This is humanity's complex and paradoxical relationship with snakes.

From my early days at my dad's ancestral house I have seen snakes getting killed. That was a time when houses were less and there was greenery everywhere. The last snake I saw getting killed was a cobra in 2007. Killing snakes in the name of them being venomous is so normalized even now the only thing that comes to people's minds when they see snakes is to kill them.

I started going to the wetlands as part of my morning walks from 2014 and  got into photography of birds and other wetland wildlife. The pathways around wetlands are narrow with dense foliage on both sides. Such places should normally teem with snakes but all I saw were the non venomous rat snakes and chequered keelbacks.

So where are all the other snakes? They are cold blooded animals which means they don't sweat and consequently cannot bear sun's heat. So from 7 am to 7 pm they hide in the foliage and hunt at night making them nocturnal animals.

I befriended a 60+ year old guy at the wetlands who has been a lifelong wildlife enthusiast and has been monitoring and photographing wildlife at wetlands for decades. One day while walking with him I asked him about the snakes at wetlands and he responded saying there are cobras all around us. Turned out his brother used to work at the state forest department and used to bring injured animals home in cagesfor nursing them and he developed the ability to find animals by their scent. Snakes smell by opening their mouths and flicking their tongues in the air and he could recognize the smell from cobra mouths.

So I dug into snakes and what I learned about them completely changed my perception about  them. First of all humans are not on the menu of snakes except the extremely rare cases of small children getting killed and consumed  by constrictors such as anaconda and python. Venom produced by venomous snakes is for hunting prey and self protection. Proteins are the building blocks of life on Earth and snakes and other venomous animals have developed the remarkable ability to convert proteins into venom. Snake venoms are either neurotoxic or hemotoxic which means they either destroy the nervous system resulting in paralysis and death or destroy blood coagulation leading to death by bleeding.
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Complex life forms most likely started off as herbivores and some among them evolved into carnivores because of stiff competition for food. Herbivores developed the ability to process protein from plant based diet and carnivores adapted to getting protein from their herbivore prey. All animals need continuous supply of protein to suvrive and reproduce. It is this precious protein snakes use to create venom which can take up to 7 days so it makes complete sense to use it judiciously. Humans are not their prey so it makes no sense to waste venom on us. Then why bite us?

We kill them because we fear their venom and they feel threatened by us. The fear factor is reciprocal. Most venomous snakes display warning signs to stay away from them because they don't want to waste their venom on any animal that is not their prey. Self protection is the only other reason for using venom. Some snakes also do what is known as dry bite wherein they bite without injecting venom. It is said that almost 80% of human deaths caused by snake bites are due to fear and not because of venom.

Snakes have adapted to live in human areas because of rodents such as rats that are food source for them in abundant supply.  But what most people do not seem to understand is, snakes that come before us are mostly sub adults and not adults. For better understanding kittens of cats have four development stages -1) immature when they feed on their mother's milk 2) juvenile when mothers start feeding them food 3) sub adult when they become independent of their mother and 4) adult when they are ready to reproduce. Snakes in comparison cannot feed their babies so they emerge from eggs with venom to hunt which means they skip the immature and juvenile stages and start off as sub adults. They are in the process of understanding the world, learning to hunt, figuring out the do's and don'ts and most importantly avoiding us.

Recently in Kerala two children were bitten by a venomous snake inside their house. It was a sub adult and had wandered into the house and on to a bed. One child was bitten on his back as he lay down on the bed and the other was bitten on the sole of his feet. The first child became gravely ill quickly and died in a few hours in spite of getting treatment but the second child recovered. Turned out the snake had injected a large amount of venom into the body of the first child and consequently did not have enough venom when biting the second child. Injecting the right amount of venom could be a crucial aspect for the survival of snakes which they have to learn through experience.

Snakes are an integral part of our environment and we cannot simply kill them all. They have adapted to us now it is upon us to understand them and adapt accordingly. We cannot expect to walk anywhere we want after dark and not get bitten by snakes when it is their time to feed.  We need to understand that they are cold blooded animals and prefer to stay in dark places so we should educate our children about snakes and make sure they know to avoid places where snakes can be present.

Snakes have been vilified from the time of the Bible but they were revered in all ancient civilizations. In the Hindu pantheon of Gods Vishnu the preserver is depicted as sleeping on the coils of a serpent and Shiva the destroyer is depicted with a serpent coiled around his neck. We are yet to decode the scientific meaning of the depictions. Our phobia about snakes has descended into paranoia which is why even a thought or comment about them evokes fear in us. I have asked several people if they have ever seen or heard about snakes chasing and biting humans. They have no answer but still get the chills every time they hear the word snake. Over generations we have been groomed to detest their faces, scales, venom and everything else about them. Greater understanding about the role they play in nature's ecosystem coulde