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King cobras may be riding trains across India [COMIC]

2 weeks ago 13

Rommie Analytics

Dikansh S. Parmar rescued a snake for the first time in middle school. It happened at his karate class in Surat, India. Someone spotted a baby cobra among a nearby pile of construction materials and wanted to kill it. But Parmar stopped them. His dad had rescued snakes, and he had a rough idea what to do. He took a rod from the construction site and used it to coax the baby snake inside a water bottle.

Parmar was lucky. The snake didn’t harm him. And people without proper training shouldn’t approach snakes. But this encounter inspired him to become a trained snake rescuer as a teen. Parmar is now also a herpetologist who studies snakes. He works at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Bonn, Germany. Recently, Parmar combined his snake rescue and science knowledge to discover something curious about his favorite snakes: king cobras.

Western Ghats King Cobras (Ophiophagus kaalinga), his team found, might ride trains across the Indian state of Goa. Parmar and his colleagues shared their evidence for this January 26 in Biotropica.

A graphic tale" with animals drawn around the letters A woman sitting on a train looks up from her phone to side-eye the passenger sitting beside her — a snake that is reading a newspaper. A man in a forested area is on the phone. He says, “Guess who rescued a king cobra?!” Image (right): A man sits up in bed, holding a phone to his ear. He says, “What? No way!” Text (below images): Parmar and his friend are both trained snake rescuers. But it was very rare to catch a king cobra — the world’s longest venomous snake. Parmar studies snakes at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Bonn, Germany. Intrigued by the rogue king cobra, he traveled to Chandor to see where it had been found. The scene reminded Parmar of another snake rescue he’d performed in 2017. At the time, Parmar didn’t think much about the snake beyond getting it safely off the train and himself back to bed. Now, it made him wonder if the king cobra in Chandor was a railway stowaway, too — and if other king cobras ever rode trains. But five king cobras had been found near Goa’s more arid western coast — all a short distance from railroad tracks. This strengthened the scientists’ suspicion that Western Ghats King Cobras were accidentally riding trains across Goa. Snakes might also seek shelter inside trains during the heavy rains of monsoon season. Parmar sets up a camera near railroad tracks. Two snakes are hiding in the grass nearby, watching. One snake says to the other, “You weren’t kidding about the human paparazzi.” A map of India shows a path from Darjeeling to Surat that spans 1,700 kilometers. Below the map, a truck driver waves to a man pushing a cart of sapling trees. Two snakes are hiding in the leaves of those trees. One snake says to the other, “Why do humans complain about roadtrips? This service is excellent!” So it’s up to human passengers to clean up leftovers — and minimize how much construction cuts through king cobras’ forest habitats — to avoid tempting the snakes on board. All: J. Wendel
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  3. King cobras may be riding trains across India [COMIC]

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