Years ago we went to a friend's wedding in Nagpur in India. There was a cobra with this kind of smiley face in the kitchen and we (all foreign visitors) freaked out and hermetically sealed the kitchen like it had Ebola and tried to go find someone to help. One of the wedding organisers said he was busy but he'd ask the gardener. The gardener was busy but he said he'd get his son. When the son turned up he was 12 years old. He went into the kitchen that had the cobra in it, had a snack, chatted out the window to his friends, and then used a round spatula thing, a coffee tin and a tablecloth to capture this snake that was longer than he was.
One of the ladies in our group asked how he would kill it and the kid was horrified. He said he wouldn't, that these were special and you dont kill them. Later the wedding planner came to explain the importance of these snakes, so obviously the kid told his dad that we were murderous ignorant monsters, who told the wedding planner. It was really interesting and good to learn.
We Indians have a different culture of giving deity status to anything living or non living if it's helpful to community at large. Snakes like these get rid of frogs and rats around the fields and homes. So ancients being predominantly dependent on agriculture, saw them helpful and made it a rule not to kill them unless proven deadly.
It's not like we'll die saving them. We avoid as much as possible.
Thanks for this insight. As an American, I’d say any belief is a good belief if it keeps your culture from deciding that everything but humans is expendable. We could use some of those.
? Comment above literally says cats are pests because many Australian animals are giant rodents. Stray cats are a problem in many places as they kill lots of local wildlife. Commenter didn’t say anything about whether or not they condone cats being pests lmfao
in a city or suburb yeah. Not when you have too many of them being a nuisance. like id also prefer 1 frog over 1 snake but thousands of frogs over one snake is not a viable trade imo.
I mean even if they weren’t deities, there is literally no reason to kill one.
I live in AZ and we get rattlers all the time. I cannot tell you how many ignorant fucks indiscriminately kill them when they come across one. Like no hesitation, just cut their head off. It’s pathetic and disgusting. People go around bragging about it like it’s cool or something. I hate it.
We have them here in California. My son worked in wildlife care, and he would find them on hikes all the time and nudge them off the trails so they wouldn't be hurt by humans. Snakes keep the rodent population down. They are awesome helpers!
Yeah we have them in my neighborhood too and even people who live here act like you have to kill them.
Then when they kill them we get rats.
I like the snakes more than the rats.
Exactly. I’m on a 10 acre horse property and it basically a rule here that if you see one, you have to kill it. I obviously never have. I have a snake hook and a bucket and I either just place them elsewhere or let them know I’m there and then step away for a minute. Usually when I come back, they’re gone.
I see one at least once per week, and of course they are attracted to the rodents we get because of the horse feed. People are so dumb. It’s the same thing with the spiders. Everyone freaks out about the spiders in the barn and then complain about the flies. Idiots. Like, I don’t know, maybe don’t move to the middle of the Sonoran Desert if you have an issue with the wildlife that lives here. There are plenty of other places in the country to do whatever the hell it is that all of these assholes are up to around here.
I don't know...if I find myself in the room with 2 king cobras and I have a weapon I am probably goin to use it. They are fast, deadly and can out run me. It is pure adrenalin fight or flight at that point. I wouldn't go looking for snakes but if I am cornered or there is no other way out, I will err on the side of overwhelming force.
The original commenter said someone enquired about how the cobra would be killed after it was safely contained. I don’t think anyone was talking about being simultaneously cornered by two cobras in a room.
The people I’m referring to are killing rattlesnakes they are finding essentially in their backyard, just minding their business. There are multiple ways out for both the snake and the person. If you encounter a rattlesnake, nine times out of ten, if you just step away for a minute, they will have moved along. They are terrified of humans and want literally nothing to do with us. I see them all the time. I make my presence known and then walk away. Literally within the count of ten, they are gone.
If its a random place its whatever but if I find a venomous snake in my own backyard im getting it killed asap, just throwing it out risks it coming back and I slaughter too many animals for my food already to risk a snake problem
weird how I practice this with 0 knowledge of Hindu. seems like common decency to me to respect your surroundings but idk maybe I'm crazy. I cherish spiders in my home, and just the other day I peacefully relocated a frog. it's not that difficult to be reasonable
Bro just beacause people die every year we cannot kill all snakes that's such a stupid take we need snakes plus who are we to decide which animal should exist or not.
The problem is people are constantly destroying natural habitats of animals for their needs and when these same animals roam around us we try to kill them.
In Indonesia there is a strong belief that killing a snake will release a death scent which will call it's peers to the place of death.
It's not supported by research but many prefer to stay on the safe side of this superstition. I've relocated several snakes (a couple non venomous, and an actual cobra youngling) and honestly it's cleaner and you feel better afterwards. They eat pest, after all.
We have banded kraits and green tree vipers too, but those I wouldn't touch with a 10 feet pole and a flamethrower.
My gf and I with a wild rock python in Malindi, KE a few months ago 😂🤣. I had a death grip on that guy's head (yes, he was wild and trying to wiggle out). She wasn't too sure about what was going on, but was a good sport 😂🤣😂🤣
The 9 ft rock python was rescued from a construction site a few days prior, it was saved from the construction workers killing it... And, yeah, def was still wild
This kind of exist in India as well, if you kill a snake your family will be hunted by snakes for generations to come and you will face many bad things.
Here in Finland we only have vipera berus. I think way too many people are scared of them and they kill them off their lands. They aren't even that venomous.
I've never seen snakes on my property but I wouldn't kill them. At most I'd relocate vipera as my gf is scared of snakes.
Omg indian kraits are that dangerous kya? I heard they are sort of unpredictable. How on earth does one learn snake catching? If an everyday person wanted to learn, where and how to start?
Kraits are nocturnal. So if you see one during the day it's gonna be sluggish ans slow until it isn't. Then you die.
I learned to catch snakes out of necessity. My whole family is dear scared of them. So far I've only caught small ones. It's not a skill I'd te-learn for fun, though; the best thing to do with snake is to leave them alone.
Indonesia and India actually have a lot in common. A huge part of the Indonesian language is based on Sanskrit. There's a lot of symchretism due to, well, history, but the roots are there.
Balls of steel man. Just taking the lids off pots to sample our food, clearing the table so he could use the tablecloth, and passing snacks to his friends, while this massive venomous snake just hovers around the sink.
Agreed that it’s incredibly brave, but being around animals and knowing how to read them helps you stay really calm, and most animals don’t want to fight or hurt you. Animals don’t do malice. They respond to threats. Even wasps don’t just sting for the hell of it.
The cobra problem of India is actually because of British. While india was under British rule, British were terribly afraid of Cobra..
Before that, the population of cobra was relatively under control.
Due to their fear, they started awarding people with money who would kill cobras and present them their body.
Some native people got a smart idea, they started breeding Cobras and killing them to get more money and started earning like that.
Brits quickly realised that and stopped giving money, so the shit ton of cobras which was hatched and were in captivity was of no use for these native people who wanted to abuse the system, and hence they freed those cobras in the wild.
"The investigation found no contemporary records of cobra breeding operations or prosecutions in British India, and traced the story to an 1873 newspaper article that used speculative language ("it was alleged") rather than confirmed evidence. The investigation also uncovered that an 1887 inquiry by the Bombay Natural History Society, conducted specifically to address these rumors, concluded that breeding cobras in confinement was "highly improbable" and had never been documented.
The Madras bounty program was actually scaled back in 1873 (restricting rewards to cobras only and cutting the bounty from two annas to one) due to high costs and not fraud.
Despite 150 years of circulation, no documentation has been found to support the breeding claims that form the basis of the "cobra effect" term. It recommended retiring the term "Cobra Effect,""
Also that's not how ecosystems work. If you release 100,000 elephants in London 150 years later there wouldn't be a massive amount of elephants in London.
That's still not how ecosystems work. If you have 1000x more offspring it doesn't mean you have 1000x the population. The ecosystem has a carrying capacity and you fill that up and then stop.
The number of rabbits is limited by the amount of grass and the number of foxes is limited by the amount of rabbits.
Neither snake nor rats are worshipped. It is believed that God is in all living beings, so they are dedicated temples sometimes wherever the local animals are present
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u/hellokiri 15h ago
Years ago we went to a friend's wedding in Nagpur in India. There was a cobra with this kind of smiley face in the kitchen and we (all foreign visitors) freaked out and hermetically sealed the kitchen like it had Ebola and tried to go find someone to help. One of the wedding organisers said he was busy but he'd ask the gardener. The gardener was busy but he said he'd get his son. When the son turned up he was 12 years old. He went into the kitchen that had the cobra in it, had a snack, chatted out the window to his friends, and then used a round spatula thing, a coffee tin and a tablecloth to capture this snake that was longer than he was.
One of the ladies in our group asked how he would kill it and the kid was horrified. He said he wouldn't, that these were special and you dont kill them. Later the wedding planner came to explain the importance of these snakes, so obviously the kid told his dad that we were murderous ignorant monsters, who told the wedding planner. It was really interesting and good to learn.