Two big snakes

King Cobra by Martin Megino

Snake catcher David Willot told me that the most dangerous snake on his beat is without doubt the king cobra. 

    “It is very fast and if you piss it off it is aggressive. The thing about them is that they can raise their body off the ground and within about half a second they can cover six foot. They glide. They are amazing. Obviously you have to be really careful,” he told me. 

    The danger comes from the massive dose of neurotoxin the snake is capable of delivering, enough to fell an elephant, some claim.

    When I saw one on a beach on Lantau it was so fat I thought it must be a python. There was no tell-tale hood, just a long thick body, sparkling in the sunshine after a swim across a bay of beach-goers. The police had it cordoned off and a gawping crowd stared, snapping pictures. A zoologist at Kadoorie farm identified our photos, noting that its unusual colouring could mark it as an escapee from the snake trade. He said it would be worth thousands of dollars. It looked calm but no one was volunteering to catch it that day.

    Willot told me that the only way to catch a king cobra alive is to sneak up on it and grab it by the back of the head. This is despite his own maxim that you should always keep the biting end as far away as possible. Which is doable with a smaller Chinese cobra, but with the king, “It would be like trying to catch a lion by its tale.”

    The snake is aptly named, everything about it is regal, its bulk, length that can reach 6 meters, its dreadful fangs, the threatening hood. But its name comes from its dominance over other snakes. It lives off other predators.

    The reptile can live for twenty years. It is the only snake species known to build a nest, and show maternal care over its young. The male builds the nest and the female defends it aggressively. In attack it is as if a two meter snake stands up and shoots forward, when in fact that is only the first third of its six meter body. It has unusually good eye-sight, which it uses to stare-out any threat, and it “hears” movement through vibrations in the ground.

    People in Hong Kong have had the snake rise to them to look into their eyes, dogs have been bitten and killed, houses have been infested, and yet recent records show no deaths from the species. It has killed here before but the snake has a paradoxical status as potentially the most dangerous in the world, yet a reluctant attacker. It is as if the species has learned that scaring the crap out of people is as good a defense as actually having to kill them.

    Their poison is different from the pit-viper’s blood-thinning agent. It acts instead on the nervous system, causing paralysis and a quicker death, usually by asphyxiation from failed respiratory muscles.

    

National Uni. Singapore

Biochemists are still struggling to understand the venom.  In 2010 after 50 years of research aiming to decode the complex cocktail of chemicals making up king cobra venom, scientists hailed the identification of one of its proteins as a major step forward. The discovery offered a tantalising glimpse into the workings of a “neurotransmitter” that could one day help in the treatment of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and even schizophrenia. But it remains the case that we still don’t really know how king cobra venom works or how it is structured. One problem being that it changes depending on environment, season and diet.

    When the genome of the king cobra was decoded, its findings were published in 2013 by a team lead by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. The study authors hailed the DNA clues that shed light on the evolution of complex toxins that are “required to overcome a variety of different prey and also circumvent any resistance to venom that may have developed in such prey.” Snake venom is a dynamic chemical weapon system that co-evolves with the defences of its prey. Not only that but trying to understand snake poison gives insights on the evolution of all proteins -- the stuff of life itself, according to the researchers. Those snakes on the ancient symbol of the Hypocrattic Oath, are beginning to make more sense to me, as I’m sure sure the biologists at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine would appreciate. 

    The snake’s value to medicine may yet be understood better in the future, but in the traditional Chinese market it has a clear commercial price-tag worth several thousand dollars.

    David Willot offered his services as a snake catcher to Hong Kong’s police force partly because of his concerns about the practice of calling out snake shop workers to remove problem snakes. The old deal was that the catcher would be given a small fee by the police for labour, and the right to do what they wanted with the offending reptile. That usually meant snake soup in a Sham Shui Po or Shueng Wan restaurant. Now partly through Willot’s and other conservationists’ petitioning, the caught snakes are delivered to Kadoorie farm for a controlled release back into the wild. It wasn’t a move that was popular with commercial snake catchers and there are still rumours that snake shop owners will arrive at a police removal with a rat snake in a hidden bag, ready to make a switch in case the target turns out to be a valuable cobra.

HK snake shop: Catherin Karnow/National Geographic

       Even the most seasoned expert should never drop his guard when handling these deadly snakes, or dead snakes. A chef died in a southern Chinese snake soup shop when he was bitten by an Indochinese spitting cobra that he had decapitated 20 minutes earlier, according to reports that emerged last year. It is a plausible scenario, as I saw first hand many years ago in Japan. A friend of mine who used to boast of outdoor survival skills he had learned in the Turkish army spotted a common looking greenish brown snake at a building site we were both working on. He leapt at it with a shovel and chopped its head off, quickly bagging up the carcass. The head lay on a pile of gravel snapping and gasping for a good twenty minutes. The rest of its coiled body writhed and twitched for several hours as we travelled back to the migrant labourers’ dorm we shared. Later he skinned, boned it and grilled it. It was tough and tasteless.

     Venom has another use, ravers in India discovered some years ago. It gets you high, they say. Four people were arrested near Mumbai in November 2013, the Indian press reported, for illegal possession of 1.7 litres of cobra venom, the equivalent to 400 doses from a single cobra or 40 from 10 snakes.  A forestry official quoted in the story was quite sure what the contraband was for, “cobra venom is used as a drug in rave parties these days. It is converted into powered form...and then mixed with alcohol,” he said. In February 2014 another man was arrested under wildlife conservation laws in the same region. He had a litre of cobra toxin on him. Indeed the first reports of snake venom smuggling were coming from animal rights groups two or three years earlier.

     Turned into powdered form for mixing with alcohol the designer drug known as K-72 or K-76 is reckoned to sell for $320 - $400 per pinch.  The effect, they say, is a powerful high and a rush of energy. Is that a sensation that a bite victim would experience moments before his organs shut down for good? I don’t intend to find out, so I think I will try to stay clear of king cobras in genral.

      A different venomous snake got closer to my home than I was comfortable with. The king isn’t the only cobra in the territory, we also have the Chinese cobra, a smaller snake but possibly more aggressive and more likely to strike. One climbed up the stairwell of my 2nd floor flat. Luckily my family and I were away on holiday, but our downstairs neighbours had a close encounter with the black snake, coiled at their eye level on higher steps. If I or any member of my family had been stumbling home in the dark we would have unknowingly pushed an increasingly irritable reptile further up the stairwell, until it would have nowhere to escape, leaving it very uncomfortable with limited options. One option of course would be to bite. As it was, the plucky downstairs boys called for help and police experts arrived to somehow pull the beast back down towards the exit, from where it slithered away never to bother us again.

     The Chinese cobra’s poison is more concentrated than that of its larger name-snake, but it doesn’t have the capacity to flood the victim with the giant dose the king can administer. It also has a hood that exaggerates its size to intimidate enemies.

Chinese cobra, Taiwan

    While Willot has been lucky enough to avoid the bite of the king, he has felt the fangs of a Chinese cobra. He was holding a captured snake when it swung up and bit him in the hand while he was distracted by a passerby who was telling him to be careful. He threw the snake down into a swamp, calmly got into his car and drove to hospital where had himself admitted for a night under observation. He was lucky, no poison had entered his bloodstream. With hindsight he thinks that the snake probably spent up its venom in lunging attacks during its earlier struggle against capture.

    It may be relatively small at about 1.5 metres but the Chinese cobra isn’t any pushover. I’ve seen footage of one repeatedly trying to attack a confident young snake expert in a Hong Kong forest. The charmer was well beyond the comfort zone of the agitated reptile, and well within striking distance. The snake made frequent stabbing strikes and even spat its poison at the man, but never landed a decisive blow. I’m sure it was a very dangerous game the person was playing, but it looked like he knew what he was doing. If the snake had got him, he wouldn’t have been the first to die here from the bite of a Chinese cobra, although no-one in Hong Kong has died from a snake bite in the past 20 years.

    In recent years snake venom was used as a murder weapon in neighbouring Taiwan in an outlandish insurance plot that involved a train-derailment. Lee Shuang-chuan’s Vietnamese third wife was in a train carriage that slid down a mountainside. She survived the crash, but later died in hospital. Lee stood to pocket about US$3 million payout specifically awarded in the event of death by an accident. But suspicions were raised by the sudden death of the woman in hospital when the medics had seen her improving in health. An examination showed she was killed by snake venom, and Lee and his brother were arrested. Lee had gained from an insurance payout previously when his second wife, also Vietnamese, had also died of a snake bite. He committed suicide during police investigations, but his brother was jailed as an accomplice, linked to both the train derailment and the poisoning.

    Under normal circumstances the key to surviving a snake bite is in correctly identifying the attacker. The Chinese cobra is relatively easy because of a mysterious cream coloured pattern on the back of its hood. It looks like Egyptian hieroglyphics. I found the give-away sign on the head of a dark snake in a drainage ditch struggling to swallow a frog. The frogs use the concrete channels on rainy nights to amplify their booming croaks, but the snakes use them just as well, as a highway to prey, hoovering up slugs, lizards and toads.

    It would have been too late for the paralysed half-swallowed frog but at least I would have been able to offer a clear identification. It is vital information, as anti-venom is specific to the unique set of toxins in each poisonous snake species. 

    Anti-venoms have been around for more than a 100 years, but they come from a laborious production process that involves a third species, usually a horse, sheep, goat or cat. An animal is first injected with a mild dose of venom to trigger an immune response. Then the doses are increased to build up immunity against a full attack. Once it has reached that stage, blood is taken and purified to extract the anti-bodies that have accumulated. These animal anti-bodies are then processed and turned into anti-venom for humans. So if you’re ever saved from a cobra bite, you’ll have a horse, sheep, goat or cat to thank.

Burmese python

Dave Willot catches a Burmese pyton (China Daily)

While all the venomous snakes deserve great respect, a non-poisonous species may have to take on the title of most awesome animal in Hong Kong. That would be the mighty Burmese python, the largest snake in the territory, a bulging 90kg, 6-metre monster. I saw one on my running path at night, or at least the tail end of it. I crouched down with my torch to look at the glistening scales on the slowly moving reptile disappearing into the dark undergrowth. It was a rippling tube of pure muscle, fatter than the thickest part of my thigh. I stopped myself from poking, reluctant to annoy the beast, but it gave me plenty of time to have a go, clearly un-phased by my presence. Watching that snake for a minute in silence threw me out of my small post-work world of petty annoyances and thrust me into the presence of a primeval natural wonder.

    It was near the spot where some people had released a 4-meter python that had been caught in a chicken pen a few weeks earlier. The snake had been preying on the illegally kept poultry for some months, but its greed was its undoing when it finally got stuck in the wire fencing, unable to pass through with a chicken sized lump in its stomach. Four people helped to carry the snake away from the scene of its crime and release it back in the wild. When they dropped it on the ground it regurgitated the partially digested bird and whizzed away into bush.

Not the one caught on Lamma, but same species

    Snake catchers like David Willot help to relocate up to 100 nuisance pythons a year from Hong Kong  properties. That is a lot of pythons caught and the number tentatively suggests a healthy population living and breeding mostly out of sight. The count is almost certainly up on previous decades of deforestation and unfettered hunting. Traditionally the snake had great value for meat, medicine and its magnificently decorated leather. In fact it still does, but it is now a protected species in the wild, and conservation measures seem to be having some success.

    Some pet owners might think that there has been too much success, especially after a spate of attacks on dogs in recent years. Three separate attacks in the same area of Saikung one year had people wondering if a rogue python had developed a taste for pet dogs. The one successful attack was on a 22kg husky, and the other two almost certainly would have succeeded had it not been for the fight put up by the dog owners. More recently there were two attacks within a fortnight. In the second brazen attack a 5-metre python ambushed a 28kg dog that was walking in a pack of five with its owner, who was also with her 7-year-old daughter, and a 5-year-old son who was about the same size as the dog. 

       Pythons start all ambushes by launching their massive jaws at the head of a target, then they wrap their bodies around the victim to suffocate by crushing their lungs. The owners of two of the unsuccessful attacks punched, kicked and pulled at the attacker, causing the snake to uncoil and retreat, leaving the dogs panting for their lives. There were calls after the first set of attacks, even from nature lovers, for the possible rogue python to be caught and packed off to some distant wilderness, but as far as we know the earlier “dog-eater” is still lurking in Saikung, and experts acknowledge that it could be the same one that ambushed dogs in new attacks.

    There were rumours many years ago, that elderly people were going missing on Lantau Island, possibly falling victim to man-eating pythons. But the rumours remained just that, and then they were forgotten. Experts doubt that six-meter pythons would target humans, although bigger pythons outside of Hong Kong have been found with human remains. Perhaps more reasonably, people express worry that children may be taken, but these fears have never proven justified. It just hasn’t happened. That is most probably testament to the finely honed instincts of mums and dads who always avoid leaving babies on their own in places where pythons might be. Or it’s almost as if wild pythons somehow know that there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed, because once crossed it could mean a whole lot of trouble.

    Though we do have plenty of examples of Burmese pythons killing humans elsewhere. Almost all of these come not from the wild, but from the homes of snake owners, in places elsewhere like New York, Virginia Beach and Papillion, Omaha. My theory is simple, its about proximity and opportunity. Pet owners give their wild reptiles hundreds of opportunities to kill them, and just once in a while a snake strikes. This kind of familiarity never happens in the wild. Field notes show that like many snakes, the Burmese python is essentially a solitary animal, not even seeking its own type for company other than to procreate.

    Biologists have called the python one of the most primitive snakes, meaning its basic form hasn’t changed since snakes first evolved. While other snakes have completely shed all external signs of ancestral leg parts, the Burmese python still has a pair of spurs that jut from where its hips would have been in lizard days. Like the vipers, the Burmese have heat-sensing pits, which they use to find and identify prey. Their large jaws are filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth that point backwards to trap struggling prey. Their lower jaws are in two separate parts, the right and left sides unfused at the front. The famous jaw dislocation is a two-step movement with an unhinging of the lower from the upper, and then the left and right sides swinging open.

    In Hong Kong the Burmese python is protected under the government’s wild animal ordinance, and so each one captured is by law handled by AFCD. Until recently the department regularly transfered captured pythons to mainland wildlife agencies, for release in nature reserves in Guangdong province. It was a policy much criticised by environmentalists. When I asked the department about where the snakes were released they wouldn’t say where. I don’t know if it was a secret, or if they didn’t know themselves. They said that the policy was necessary given Hong Kong’s small size and dense population. 

    The risks were obvious. While it would be impossible to openly sell a python in Hong Kong outside of the licensed pet trade, conservationists reported seeing them caged in wet markets across the border. The skin of the species itself can reportedly fetch 10,000 yuan on the black market. As one animal expert said, “Why China, where there is a huge market for snakes as food?”

    Thanks to pressure by committed environmentalists like Dave Willot, the government quietly changed its policy around 2011, halting the deportments and working with Kadoorie farm on a local release programme. It also adopted another one of Willot’s suggestions, the chipping of caught snakes to build-up data on their ecology.

    Willot catches up to ten pythons a year and for him one of the issues was that there were no follow-up studies in population dynamics and conservation. As much as anything else the shipping out of rogue pythons to mainland China was an opportunity lost for learning more about how and where they live in Hong Kong. That includes the impact on local ecosystems of removing even one Burmese python. It is well known that removing top predators from an area will skew the balance between all the animals and plants there. These giant opportunists feed on anything they can get hold of. That would include native fauna we want to protect, but the non-discriminating carnivores are just as likely to eat feral cats and dogs, rats and other snakes. They have also been known to eat monkeys, whose spread out of Kowloon towards Saikung is being noted by residents who fear that AFCD numbers are short of the true picture. It’s still early days for the chipping programme but at least there is now hope that we will build up a richer, more detailed picture of these incredible giants that are indigenous to the Hong Kong ecosystem.

    On the other side of the world we are getting reports of the Burmese python as an invasive species. The giant snake was first recorded in the Florida Everglades in 1979 and has since thrived in there. There are now tens of thousands estimated to be breeding in the national park, entirely the fall-out from a huge global pet trade. In the mid-2000s the United States was importing about 30,000 Burmese pythons a year and hatchlings were selling for as little as 20 US dollars each. All too often owners captivated at first by the beautiful and apparently easily managed reptiles, find out too late that living with a giant serpent is a bad idea. A classic response in the US is to take them to the Everglades and grant them freedom. It probably feels like the kindest thing to do, but economists, amongst others, may beg to differ after a 1999 study found that trying to control invasive species was costing the US 137 billion dollars a year. And the Burmese python is one hell of an invader. 

    The wide-ranging snakes are eating their way through a good proportion of Florida’s native fauna. Grey squirrels, possums, black rats and house wrens have all been consumed, along with at least 25 different species of birds according to one study. Four of the birds taken – snowy egret, little blue heron, white ibis and limpkin -- are listed as “species of special concern.” These mighty snakes are even taking on the park’s top predators.

    Alligators in the Everglades can reach four meters. They play an important role in the ecosystem of the park, from the control of predatory fish species, to the creation of watering holes that become a refuge for wildlife in dry seasons. But the top native predator of the park needs to be treated with caution. Since 1948, according to Florida’s wildlife records, alligators have killed around 25 people. Other than the occasional person, these gnarly carnivores will attempt to eat anything they can catch. They’ll go for turtles, chicken, deer and cows, and they’ve been known to kill panthers and black bears. They are one of the only animals – other than humans – known to attack a six-meter Burmese python. 

    It is a testament to the power of the Burmese that alligator-python conflicts are fairly evenly matched. Stunned tourists have watched alligators battle with pythons, struggling in the midst of a strangle hold. In one epic battle an alligator held a python in its jaws for 24 hours, only to let it slip away from its grip and swim away to freedom. 

    

National Geographic

The most famous symbol of the struggle for dominance in the Everglades has to be a photograph that surfaced in 2005 showing the back half of a crocodile carcass protruding from what can only be described as a burst python. The best accepted theory is that the Burmese python managed to swallow the crocodile but its last meal was too much to digest. It may have been injured in the epic battle, or else the crocodile may have had an accomplice, either way in the course of swallowing, the python exploded. Its head blew clean off and its torso ripped open to expose the rear end of the doomed alligator. The scores were even that day in the war of the Everglades.

    It is hard to imagine that the small baby snake I saw on the Lamma beachfront was a potential alligator slayer. A crowd stood around the 50 cm snake, curled defenceless against a restaurant wall. It could have been flushed into the bay through a drainage channel that cut through a valley of former agricultural land. It was thin and delicate, but undefeated, as if it knew it was the rightful heir to the top of the food chain. Its unmistakable Burmese leather was a natural design of perfect beauty. But that day, surrounded by curious humans, it was very vulnerable indeed. And I wish I could say with certainty that it now lives quietly at the head of the valley it was flushed out of.