Rahul Alvares <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OH, WHY DO MOST PEOPLE SO DISLIKE SNAKES?
By Rahul Alvares I have always been rather fond of snakes. I have been chasing them ever since I was a kid. My parents therefore let me take a year off from school in order to help me improve my knowledge about these reptiles. During that free year I traveled around the country learning snake handling with Neelimkumar Khaire at the Pune Snake Park and Rom Whitaker and the Irula tribe at Madras Crocodile Bank. Most people on the other hand dislike snakes. I have found, however, that the biggest crowd drawers are always invariably snakes. Whenever I have gone snake-catching in someone's house or compound, neighbors, housewives, passers-by and children spontaneously gather around. All claim they detest snakes or are terrified of them. Yet everyone of them without exception sits glued to the show, assiduously watching the proceedings. And if I have to handle a snake near a road, then bikes, cars and even passenger buses will halt to catch a glimpse of the snake catching session in progress. What is it that makes reptiles in general -- and snakes in particular -- so loathed and feared yet so morbidly fascinating as well? What place do snakes occupy in nature's scheme of things and within our society today? Most people look upon snakes as dangerous, poisonous, slimy, revengeful and -- most important -- associated in some way with the supernatural. One source for these feelings is pure superstition passed down from one generation to the next. The second is movies, originating from both Bollywood and Hollywood. Though Bollywood usually makes snakes into heroes, they encourage people to believe that snakes can perform outrageous feats such as opening door handles by coiling around them, drinking milk when offered to them, protecting vulnerable heroines and chasing villains, and most famous of all -- approaching beens when they are played by the actors. The myth about beens is so firmly entrenched in people that I remember my neighbors actually turning down their T.V volumes during these been playing scenes, fearful that the sound would bring snakes into the house! Street-side snake charmers prey upon these fears for their trade. Hollywood movies are equally bad. One old famous movie is 'The Black Stallion'. The first scenes show a boy and a black horse stranded on an island. The boy is sleeping exhausted on the sand, after having survived a storm. Suddenly a snake is shown approaching the boy -- obviously to harm him -- when the horse appears in the nick of time and stomps the snake to death. The movie 'Anaconda' was a joke. Anacondas don't grow that big, they don't chase people -- since they are very heavy they move very slowly -- and they are never that vicious and bloodthirsty. My father recently was watching a movie called 'Out of Towners', about a township coming up on a nest of rattle-snakes. He found it creating so many negative feelings in him about the snakes that he soon turned it off. India has loads of myths about snakes. I am going to call attention to only two to three which I believe to be the most notorious. The first is that snakes -- cobras especially -- are vengeful creatures. Kill or harm a snake and its mate will track you down over thousands of miles and years of time to finally find you and pay back. Nothing could be further from the truth. Snakes have a very small brain used only for their instinctual life. They lack the capacity to remember or even distinguish one human from another. Secondly, snakes are petrified of humans. Even the much dreaded cobra is a coward and will raise its hood only when frightened or severely provoked. During my eight years of snake catching I have released hundreds of snakes right behind my house -- with their teeth intact. None of them has ever returned to harm me. Another myth concerns Nag Panchami and snake charmers. This year we celebrated the festival on 2 August. Every year, according to Maneka Gandhi, sixty to seventy thousand snakes die in Maharashtra and neighboring states during this festival alone. Cobras and other poisonous snakes have their fangs pulled out and their mouths bruised and smashed beyond repair. These snakes are then taken from door to door by snake charmers, their mouths forced open and milk poured down their throats. Milk is not snake food. It is more like a poison for them; it has adverse effects on them, choking them, causing lung infections and finally death. I find it amazing that adults who pride themselves on their capacity for rational thought blindly accept such practices. Just ask yourself, where in the wild would a snake get milk to drink? Snakes do not produce milk. They do not feed milk to their young ones. Nor will any cow tolerate a snake's sharp teeth round one of its udders. Yet the entire Indian population is firmly mired in the belief that snakes must be fed milk! By the way, though I have used the word snake 'charmer', in actual practice we find that snakes are incapable of being charmed. Snakes are stone deaf to air borne sounds, they couldn't possibly hear the snake charmers been if it were played with an amplifier attached to it. Neither can they hear any of the commands or mantras of the snake charmer. They respond only instinctively to the movement of the been as the snake charmer waves it in front of them. They see an enemy object and they try to scare it away by hissing or raising their hood. They are not dancing to the music but they are terrified, raising their hoods only in self defense. Hardly charming whichever way you look at it! Once a snake has had the misfortune to land in a snake charmer's basket, it will never see the wild again and death is just a month or two away. Even if they are rescued from these snake charmers, they cannot be released into the wild as they will certainly die; they will be unable to hunt again and fend for themselves. They need their fangs to inject their prey before they can feed on it. Snake charmers rarely bother to feed their snakes; they keep them starving till the day they die of hunger -- which may take anything up to two months -- or exhaustion, which probably comes earlier. Therefore do not patronize or give money to snake charmers. Also remember that misusing snakes for entertainment or rituals is against the country's wildlife laws which protect besides pythons and cobras, even ordinary non-poisonous snakes like the rat snake. If you are really concerned, inform the forest department and have the snake charmer arrested. Let me give you some honest facts about snakes, their bodies, their powers and their ecological role. The body of a snake is covered with dry scales giving it a smooth, glossy, dry feel (not slimy, as people believe). They have very poor eyesight and their hearing of airborne sounds is zero, hence they rely on only one major sense i.e. smell. This they accomplish not with their nose, but with their tongue instead. You must have noticed how they constantly flick their forked tongue in and out, while actually they are gathering scents from the air that can tell them if there is prey or a predator around, and even help them distinguish between living and nonliving objects. They have in essence evolved from reptiles, losing their limbs along the way. For all purposes, they are no different from any of the thousands of amazing animals living today. Only four of the two hundred and fifty six species of snakes in India are considered to be dangerous or fatal. That is the cobra, the krait, the Russell's viper and the saw-scaled viper. Unprovoked and left alone even these four will never intentionally accost and bite human beings. All snakes are carnivorous and hence play an important role in maintaining the balance of pests such as rats. Rats consume some 30-40% of our grain every year. In addition they spread dreadful diseases like the plague and different types of fevers. The only animals able to hunt them down their burrows are snakes. They are in fact designed for this purpose, hence they lack limbs. Young snakes feed on a lot of insects as well. Take snakes away and, some of these harmless insects could explode in population taking to our fields and homes for their food. Nature's balances are so complex that they are very often beyond our understanding. Besides I have always believed that we have no right to kill or exterminate any animal for that matter. Every organism was put on this earth with a purpose, and has just as much right as we have to exist peacefully on this earth. It is only we who classify them with one purpose in mind -- economical/non-economical. Moreover snakes are present everywhere, it is just because we don't see them that we feel that they aren't there. They mind their own business hunting rats and frogs and living their lives, only occasionally are they so pre occupied chasing their prey that they enter human homes. This is when we notice them and assume the worst intensions. Snakes cannot move on smooth surfaces. They would therefore never enter human homes except by mistake. Snakes only bite if stepped upon (incidentally that is the best way to get bitten by a dog as well!) Simple precautions will help you avoid ever having trouble with them. Whenever you step outside for a walk in forested or grassy areas, use thick leather boots and a good pair of trousers. Snakes can feel vibrations transmitted along the ground and will normally move away from your path much before you approach them. If you are working in grassy patches with your hands, use a thick pair of gloves. Lightly disturb the area with a long stick before you commence your work. Always use a torch at night. 80-90% of the snakes I have caught were located in piles of rubbish: discarded objects, firewood or under large piles of bricks or stone. Snakes also hide in rat holes once they have eaten the inhabitants. So, clean out all the rubbish and fill up all the rat holes around the house. Set up traps for rats on the roof. Cut any branches or creepers that are touching the walls of your house. There are a lot of things you can do for snakes as well. For a start we can at least stop senselessly killing them. Though killing snakes is against the wildlife law, none of us thinks twice about taking a stick or stone to their head whenever we come across them. There are plenty of youth now trained to handle snakes, who will gladly come and take away the animal should you encounter one. In Goa, for example, where I live, everyone knows the phone numbers of trained snake-catchers. There are more than a dozen of them. Their numbers and addresses are published by animal welfare groups in the newspapers from time to time. Snakes have been receiving a bad image since biblical times. Corporates can fund educational films to educate people on these much-maligned creatures and their uses. People need to be shown how the whole ecological balance set up by nature would be affected if snakes are all exterminated. Though there are many snake lovers, snake protectors and enthusiasts, they lack the infrastructure and funding to carry out their snake saving activities on a professional and orderly basis. Corporates could help a lot by funding, say, a snake rescue and rehabilitation club. We may be able to entertain the idea of living in a world without snakes, but I believe if that happens we will end up pretty miserable. And that will continue as long as we keep bringing more and more of Mother Nature's animals to their extinction. The way I look at it we don't have a choice: we must save snakes if we are to save ourselves. Far better then that we improve our knowledge of these creatures and establish greater harmony in feelings between our species and theirs. ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################