So, there we were, Nafisa and I. At home, just back from office. I was a bit tired. When Nafisa got a call from Karthik saying he had caught a “King” Cobra. So I did go and take some pictures of the “King” or should I say Prince?
I have heard from others that our area (NGEF Layout, OMBR Layout) has a lot of snakes and cobras too. However, this is the first time I have seen or my friends have seen before. Read more at Karthik’s – http://planetphoenix.com/2009/06/08/another-day-at-the-indiblogger-office/.
Had a great beach party at Anand’s beach house back in my hometown, Nagercoil. The Chows were there except for, the spanner king, Renie. Hehehehe! (Anoop went ahead and got himself a temporary tattoo of a spanner on his arm as a reminder for himself about Renie.)
Had a pre wedding party with relatives visiting. The above picture is one taken with my bro and some of my cousins.
Went ahead and got married.
Went to Veli in Trivandrum and took some random pics.
(Photo to be uploaded)
Went to the Trivandrum zoo and took a video of a spectacled cobra shedding skin. At the beginning of the video you will see the snake shedding the last piece from the tail. Very excited, shiny and smooth it looked after shedding the skin.
(Video to be uploaded)
Visited the Crocodile Bank in Madras with Renie. It was awesome.
Came back home to Bangalore entering a new life with Nafisa. Well.
I love cobras. Period. This is very evident from quite a few of my posts in the past years.
http://anw.in/?s=cobra
http://awesomefotos.com/?s=cobra
To continue, this is one interesting picture from NTDWA. This one is a beauty of an albino cobra. Albino cobras actually cannot survive well in the wild because of their coloring. They cannot hunt easily and more often than not are hunted easily by predators. Why? Because of the coloring, of course.
By Anwin
And the best part is that I can go and visit the Crocodile park in Chennai, where the cobra is currently at. Hmmm… when will that be?
Excerpts:
The three-and-a-half foot reptile was the only one of his albino siblings to survive, and is now kept on his own in a specially constructed enclosure. Goya, who is a milky colour with shades of pink, was a gift from Dehiwala Zoo in Sri Lanka where they specially breed albino snakes.
My love affair with cobras continue. The cobras are my all time favorite reptiles. I have always been fascinated with them from childhood. I am sure the stories my dad narrated to me as a child helped a lot. He used to talk about my granddad’s encounters with the cobras over the years. It so happens that my granddad used to be a small game hunter and so I used to love his adventure stories.
So when I read about the new African species of spitting cobras, I was quite interested.
The newly anointed Ashe’s spitting cobra, or large brown spitting cobra (Naja ashei), can reach lengths of more than 9 feet (274 centimeters) and is believed to deliver more venom with a single bite than any other cobra on the planet.
The aggressive reptile was previously identified as a brown-colored variant of the black-necked spitting cobra, though researchers had long suspected that it merited its own species. Now blood and tissue analysis have confirmed this theory to be true.
The snake dwells in the dry lowlands of north and east Kenya, as well as in Uganda and Ethiopia.
Of course, King Cobra is the longest of all venomous snakes with lengths up to 18.5 ft (5.7 m), but it is not part of the cobra family.
Read more at National Geographic. And more pictures here.
Update: A beautiful article on the large brown spitting cobra can be found at Saving Snakes blog at Wild Life Direct.
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