COBRAS AND HUMANS: FESTIVALS, SNAKE CHARMERS, ATTACKS

COBRAS AND HUMANS

Cambodian seven-headed naga

Cobras sometimes seek refuge in people’s shoes. Encounters with cobras in India increase significantly during the monsoon season, when snakes often move into man-made structures to escape flooding. The timing of the origin of spitting in African and Asian Naja species corresponds to the separation of the human and chimpanzee evolutionary lineages in Africa and the arrival of Homo erectus in Asia. It has therefore been hypothesized that the development of our earliest human ancestors may have triggered the evolution of spitting in cobras. [Source: Wikipedia +]

There are numerous myths about cobras in India, including the idea that they mate with rat snakes. Rudyard Kipling's short story "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" features a pair of Indian cobras named Nag and Nagaina, the Hindi words for male and female snake, respectively. Indian cobras were often a heraldic element in the official symbols of certain ancient princely states of India such as Gwalior, Kolhapur, Pal Lahara, Gondal, Khairagarh and Kalahandi, among others. An Indian cobrais on the Kalahandi State coat of arms. +

In Buddhism, cobras symbolize the unpredictability of life and the suddenness of death. They are also associated with the Nāgas, a race of divine or semi-divine beings that are often depicted as cobras (See Hinduism below). The story of Patacara illustrates how a cobra's involvement led to her husband's tragic fate. In Theravada Buddhism, cobra hoods are a decorative element linked to extravagance. In Taiwan cobras are released into the wild as a Buddhist folklore practice the same way birds of released..

Cobra Worship in India

The Indian cobra is often featured in Hindu religion and revered in several regional traditions. When killed by humans, it is usually cremated with milk and ghee along with a cloth by Hindus.

Cobras are worshiped throughout India. Unlike Christians who equate snakes with the devil and the temptation of Eve, Hindus view cobras as a positive symbol. According to legends they have shielded kings, tribal heroes and Hindu gods such as Krishna with their hoods. Villagers honor them for their ability to bring rain, fear them for their ability to bring disasters and regard them as reincarnations of important chiefs. The Tamils of southern India call cobras “Nulla Pambu” — the good snake.

Nagas are mythical semi-divine serpent-gods that are often depicted as cobras with multiple heads (often five) that spread out like a fan. They are regarded as protectors of sacred places and live in the water or the underworld beneath the earth. Ruled by Vasuki and enemies of Garuda. They can marry humans and can bring rain and prosperity to a region and are closely associated with Vishnu and Vaishnavote Hinduism.

They can marry humans and bring rain and prosperity to a region and are closely associated with Vishnu and Vaishnavote Hinduism.

Cobras and Shiva

Snake Charmers in Benares 1904

The Hindu god Shiva is often depicted with a cobra called Vasuki, coiled around his neck, symbolizing his mastery over maya, the illusory nature of the world. Vishnu, in his form called the anantashayana, is usually portrayed as reclining on the coiled body of Shesha, a giant snake deity with multiple cobra heads.

Especially among Tamils, cobras are associated with the Shiva, one the three most important gods in Hinduism, and lingams, symbols of Shiva that represent rebirth and fertility and the creative forces of the universe. Shiva is sometimes painted with a cobra around his head. Phallic-shaped stone lingams are often protected by nagas.

Termite mounds are also associated with Shiva and a cobra found living in one is cause for celebration. Sometimes when one os found Tamil women build a wall around a snake-occupied mound and turn it into a shrine. If the snake stays in the mound priests visit and offerings of camphor and flowers are made. After years a temple may grow up around the mound.

Sometimes a crowd of will gather around a cobra. Usually the snake will make a hasty retreat to the nearest underbrush, but sometimes it will rear up in the middle of the crowd open it hood and make no attempt to strike those watching or to get away. When this happens women will sometimes roll their eyes and go into a trance, swaying back and forth within inches of the snake. This will go on for hours sometimes, with the snake just as entranced as the women and they are of the snake. When Miller asked a women about the experience she said, "Of course the Good Snake wouldn't bite us. To us Nulla Pambu is a manifestation of Lord Shiva. The god himself was there, and naturally we worshiped without fear.”

Cobra Festival

Cobras are also worshipped during the Hindu festival of Naga Panchami and Nagula Chavithi. Snake charmers with their cobras in a wicker basket are a common sight in many parts of India during these festival.

The town of Shirala in west-central India hosts the Great Serpent Festival in July. Before it begins men spend weeks digging up the earth around their town looking for snakes. When a snake is caught it is handled reverently and placed in a large earthen pot. On the day of the festival the snake handlers parade the snake pots through the streets, followed by boys with red-washed monitor lizards carried high in the air tied to poles. According to Miller the lizards look as if they have been crucified. But apparently the ritual is not cruel; the lizards are regularly given water.

When the procession ends the snakes are let out of the their jars while handlers hold on to their tails. Parch rice is thrown in the the direction of the snakes and offerings are made. Bamboo sticks are used to control their movements and boys sit in front rolling pebble-filled pots back and forth. Miller said all of the snakes he examined had fangs "yet never throughout the day, did we see any of these hundreds of cobras attempt to strike their handlers."

Snake Charmers

Snake charmers, who play a bamboo-and-gourd flute as a snake stands up inside a basket, use cobras in their act. One snake charmer told journalist National Geographic, "The snakes like the music I play and do a dance for me.” But actually it is a myth that cobras are somehow charmed by flute music. It is the movement of the flute not the music that hypnotizes the cobra. When faced with a moving object, cobras naturally sit up and open their hoods and follow the movements. Cobras have no external ears and are essentially deaf to sound coming through the air, though they are sensitive to sound vibrations transmitted through the ground.

Snake charmers are generally very poor. They travel from place to place with their snakes in baskets and only a few other possessions, sometimes tied onto donkeys. Many of them feed off of wild animals their dog help them to catch. An average charmer may have three five-foot-long cobras that live for a about a year in captivity. The snakes are feed milk poured down their mouths with a spoon made from a sheep's leg bone, and given pieces of goat meat which are pushed down their throat with a blunt stick.

Snakes charmers often let their children play with their cobras. It is a matter of debate as to whether the snakes have been defanged or not. Of the hundreds of snakes examined by Miller and his assistants not one had its fangs intact. One snake charmer told journalist National Geographic, “When I catch a snake — we always catch our own snakes — I cut out the two little poison boxes it carries in its head." sometimes venom is milked prior to the snake charmer's act. The snake charmer may then sell this venom at a very high price.

Catching Cobras for Snake Charmers

Some cobras are caught by snake charmers themselves. Others are caught by farmers and sold to the snake charmers. The Baverias are a caste that use dogs to catch snakes for snake charmers. In any case the snake charmer trade take its toll on cobras. Some are killed during the capture process and generally those that are caught don’t live long in captivity.

Of the snakes examined by Miller most were suffering from starvation, because cobras are a sensitive snake and refuse to take food except under ideal conditions. They usually die within a couple of months of being sold to the charmers, either from starvation or abscess that develop wear their fangs had been ripped out.

The Wildlife Prevent Act of 1972 banned the catching of snakes. The ban was aimed at preventing the killing of snakes for their skin but also affected snake charmers. In the 1970s in Madras one tannery alone was processing 500 cobra skins a day.

In April 2002, Reuters reported: “A Bangladeshi snake charmer called in to find two serpents in a suburban home near Dhaka unearthed over 3,000 deadly cobras and hundreds of eggs. Police and local newspapers said snake charmer Dudu Miah captured over 3,500 young cobras at two houses in Narayanganj near Dhaka. The find, however, triggered panic among neighbours who fled their homes, police said.

Newspapers said Miah was called in by Mantu Kasai after his wife found two large cobras on their property. Helped by his assistants, Miah dug beneath the floors of two houses and unearthed the slithering stockpile. Miah said he would look for more cobras elsewhere in the neighbourhood, but was undecided about what to do with his catch. Cobras, which are highly venomous and endemic to Bangladesh, often nest in houses -- frequently ridding them of rats and other domestic pests. [Source: Reuters, April 30, Tue Apr 30, 2002]

Snake Charmer Protest

In November 2004, angry snake charmers in Orissa in India threatened to let loose 5,000 snakes in the state assembly building to protest harassment under law. One charmer said, “We look after them as if they our children. We catch poisonous snakes, which intrude into households, tend to them in our homes and earn our livelihood by performing public shows.”

The BBC reported: Snake charmers in the Indian state of Orissa have threatened to release snakes in the state assembly in protest at a crackdown on their activities. Several snake charmers have been arrested in recent weeks and now face being prosecuted under wildlife protection laws. Representatives of the snake charmers say nearly 20,000 people could lose their jobs as a result of the drive. [Source: Sandeep Sahu BBC, November 24, 2004]

Wildlife activists in Orissa have campaigned hard to stop snake charming. They say it causes cruelty to the snakes. But Chittaranjan Das, the head of Padmakesharpur - a village of snake charmers on the outskirts of the Orissa capital, Bhubaneswar - said they had been engaged in the profession for centuries and would have no other source of livelihood if forced to stop.He denied the allegations of wildlife officials and activists that the charmers torture snakes during captivity. "How can we harm them when our whole livelihood depends on them?" he asked.

Sporting snakes on their shoulders and necks, the snake charmers said wildlife officials had been arresting them, seizing their snakes and placing them in the local Nandankanan zoo. "If earning money out of snakes is a crime, are the zoo authorities not doing the same by exhibiting them to the public?" asked Sanatan Behera, another snake charmer who has had seven of his snakes seized recently.

LAK Singh of the State Wildlife Organisation said snake charmers needed to realise that times had changed and that they needed to start looking for an alternative source of livelihood. The snake charmers say the government must provide them with an alternate source of income if they wanted to stop them from their present trade. But wildlife activists do not buy the argument. "It is a life versus livelihood question - the life of snakes and the livelihood of snake charmers," says Biswajit Mohanty, Secretary of the Orissa Wildlife Society. "And the life of snakes has to win in any battle between the two. They can have a different source of livelihood. But a snake cannot have a second life once killed," he said.

Cobras and Mongooses

Cobra and mongoose fights are often staged as a tourist attraction. The practice has been going for some time. Describing a battle between the mongoose Rikki-tikki-tavi and the cobra Naga, Rudyard Kipling wrote: "Eve to eye and head to head...This shall end when one is dead." Rikki-tikki-tavi was an Indian, or gray mongoose, a species known for killing cobras, even king cobras.

Mongooses usually win. They fight in a dart and weave fashion — provoking the snake to strike — until the snake wears itself out. When the snake tires the mongoose goes in for the kill by crushing the snake’s skull with its jaws. It was often thought that mongooses were able to defeat cobras due to their lighting quick reflexes. They also have an added advantage: an immunity to snake venom. Israeli researchers have found that mongooses can withstand 20 times the venom a mouse can, relative to their body size.

The cobra-mongoose fight staged for tourist are often said affairs. Describing one fight, Miller wrote, "The charmer provokes an emaciated mongoose into attacking a feeble cobra, then usually knocks the mongoose away before it can do any damage to the snake.” In the wild mongoose generally only go after small, young cobras. “Mongooses are highly intelligent animals,” Miller wrote, “and it seems unlikely to me they would try to get their dinner in such a difficult and dangerous way when frogs, toads and lizards can be had with no risk at all.”

Cobra Attacks

Garuda eating a naga

In October 1999, AFP reported: “At least 16 people have died following poisonous bites by the same snake in northern Nigeria, a top official said. All the victims were attacked by the cobra in the last 10 days in Birnin Kudu, the capital of the northern state of Kebbi, an official in the governor's office said. The snake attacked its victims one after the other, he said. A local journalist confirming the report said: "It would appear suddenly, strike a victim before disappearing, only to reappear to bite yet another." The official said the government was planning to launch a public campaign against overgrown weeds. People would also be given vaccines against snake bites. [Source: AFP, October 29 1999]

In August 2012, Reuters reported: “A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit it back and killed the reptile in a tit-for-tat attack, a newspaper said. Nepali daily Annapurna Post said Mohamed Salmo Miya chased the snake, which bit him in his rice paddy, caught it and bit it until it died. "I could have killed it with a stick but bit it with my teeth instead because I was angry," the 55-year-old Miya, who lives in a village some 200 km (125 miles) southeast of the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, was quoted by the daily as saying. The snake, called "goman" in Nepal, is also known as the Common Cobra. Police official Niraj Shahi said the man, who was being treated at a village health post and was not in danger of dying, would not be charged with killing the snake because the reptile was not among snake species listed as endangered in Nepal. [Source: Reuters, August 23, 2012]

In a similar story The Age reported in August 2002: “A cobra got more than it bargained for in eastern India after a female victim of its bite bit back, according to a report. India's “United News” reported Nasim Bibi, 25, of West Bengal, sank her teeth into the snake and killed it. Bibi was sleeping with her two children at her home in Hatikanda village when the cobra slithered in and sank its fangs. She woke up in pain to find the snake making its getaway. She grabbed it and bit down as hard as she could, killing it in the process. Police said Bibi received treatment for the snakebite at a local hospital [Source: The Age, August 15 2002]

Eight-Year-Old Bitten by Cobra Bites Back — He Survives But the Cobra Doesn’t

In November 2022, an eight-year-old boy in remote Pandarpadh village in Jashpur district. India turned the tables on a deadly cobra after getting bitten by it. He bit back and killed the poisonous snake. David Strege wrote in FTW Outdoors: In what The New Indian Express aptly called “a bizarre incident,” the boy named Deepak was playing in the backyard of his house on when he was bitten. “The snake got wrapped around my hand and bit me,” Deepak explained to The New Indian Express. “I was in great pain. As the reptile didn’t budge when I tried to shake it off, I bit it hard twice. It all happened in a flash.” [Source: David Strege, FTW Outdoors, November 4, 2022]

The boy was rushed to a health care center. “He was quickly administered anti-snake venom and kept under observation for the entire day, and discharged,” Dr. Jems Minj told the Express. Deepak didn’t show any symptoms and recovered fast, owing to the dry bite when the poisonous snake strikes but no venom is released,” snake expert Qaiser Hussain told the Express. “Such snakebites are painful and may show only local symptoms around the area of the bite.”Jashpur is a tribal district, which is also known as Naglok (abode of serpents) because it has over 200 species of snakes,” the Express wrote.

Pet Cobra Attacks

In July 2000, The Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas reported: “A man was in serious condition at a Fort Worth hospital yesterday after being bitten by an Egyptian cobra, a venomous but common snake often kept as a pet, authorities said. The man, whose name was not released, drove himself to Harris Methodist Fort Worth, hospital spokeswoman Ashley Wesson said. Antivenin to treat the man was flown to Fort Worth from the Dallas Zoo, zoo officials said. [Source: Bob Mahlburg Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, July 5, 2000]

In January 2001, Mark Holmberg wrote in the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Tom Townsend, a 42-year-old nuclear power plant engineer, had been keeping 50 to 60 poisonous snakes inthe basement of his rural Waverly home until he was bitten by one of his pet cobras, said Sussex County Sheriff Stuart Kitchen. " Townsend's wife was "really terrified" by the incident (the couple has young children), and Kitchen admitted he wasn't shy about "encouraging them" to get rid of the deadly snakes. [Source: Mark Holmberg, Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 17, 2001]

Deputies and rescuers responding to Townsend's 911 call for help were surprised by the extent of the collection, which filled padlocked cages throughout the entire basement. "There were 10 to 12 rattlesnakes alone," Kitchen said. "You could hear them rattling." One of Townsend's exotic vipers was so deadly, a state biologist called it a "two-stepper," Kitchen said. "You get bit, you take two steps and die." Townsend was just one of many "herp keepers" across the country who collect poisonous species, which is not illegal in Virginia. "This guy hadn't broken any laws," Kitchen said.

Rumors about Townsend's deadly snakes had circulated in the Waverly area for some time, and officials became worried that firefighters and rescuers could be endangered if there was ever a fire or flood at the Townsends' two-story home beside the Nottoway River. "But we couldn't find any law that would enable us to do anything about it," Kitchen said.

Townsend had been using tongs to feed a rat to a spectacled cobra from India - the deadly Naja naja naja species - when the snake dropped the rat and bit him on the first finger of his right hand. "He knew he was in trouble," Kitchen said. By the time rescuers had arrived, "he had written down a [medical] protocol to go with him to the hospital." Townsend also had applied a proper tourniquet. Deputy Sheriff Donnie Marrin knew as soon as he arrived that Townsend would not make it if he wastransported by ambulance, so he called for a helicopter.

Townsend was sitting up and talking to Marrin at first. But, by the time the helicopter lifted off, he was semiconscious and barely breathing. Ordering the helicopter was one of several key actions that saved Townsend's life, Kitchen said. Nurses at Virginia's Poison Center hit the phones, locating antivenin in New York City and Miami, and it was flown to Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical College of Virginia Hospitals. Townsend's hand is still swollen, but he is expected to make a full recovery. Kitchen said he believes Townsend's health insurance will be paying for the intensive and expensive rescue effort. "I know the sheriff's office isn't."

Myanmar's Cobra Removal Service

Ko Toe Aung, a burly 40-year-old who said he has been hospitalised seven times since he started catching snakes in 2016, told AFP that anyone in the snake-catching game has to be "fast and agile". "Wherever we catch a venomous snake, it is 90/10... It's a 90 percent chance the snake will bite me." His team — called , or "Golden Love" in Burmese — has around a dozen members and rescued around 200 snakes in 2022 year from around Yangon. Social media videos of the team pulling snakes out of sink plugholes and extricating them from roof eaves have earned them the moniker "prince and princess of snakes" from local media. [Source: Lynn Myat, AFP, April 27, 2023]

Lynn Myat of AFP wrote: The team all have day-jobs and rely on donations for everything from their protective gear to petrol to run their purple-colored snake "ambulance". They mostly catch Burmese pythons — non-venomous snakes that typically grow to around five meters (16 feet) long and squeeze their prey of rats and other small mammals to death. Cobras and banded krait also make homes in Yangon's apartments and are a trickier prospect — their venom can be fatal.

It is a danger never far from the team's work. In March, they spent two days trying to remove several cobras nesting underneath a Yangon house. Tunnelling into the foundations as neighbours watched, their digging was frequently interrupted by the snakes inside spitting venom towards them. "It stinks," said Ko Ye Min, 31, a tattooed member of the team, as he took a break from trying to reach the nest.

Recognising exactly which kind of stink is another skill a snake-catcher must hone, according to Ko Toe Aung. "We have to be familiar with their smells... to identify the species of snakes before removing them," he said. Cobras smell "rotten", he said. "But the smell of a python is much stronger. Sometimes we even vomit when we bring it into the ambulance."

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, CNN, BBC, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated February 2025