When at the beginning of World War II Field Marshal Jan Smuts (then South Africa’s prime minister) decided to send troops up to North Africa he asked for a supply of anti-snakebite kits. He knew of the notorious carpet adder (or saw-scaled viper) in that region and that troops would be operating in the bush. Four army volunteers were drafted for the duration of the war to the Komatipoort area on the Mozambique border to catch adders and milk them for the production of antivenin (antivenom serum). The men produced a steady supply and after the war a count was made of how many soldiers had been bitten in the five years that South Africans were ‘up north’. There had been only four victims – the four snake-catchers at Komatipoort1.
In Africa there are not much more than two dozen species of snakes that are potentially dangerous to humans. Aside from venomous species, there is also the non-poisonous but potentially dangerous rock python. Common though many of these species are, and deadly though some can be, they do not cause anywhere near the anxiety created by other dangerous mammals – yet annually they probably kill more than all other animals combined (apart from those killed by the malarial mosquito). There is no marked resentment towards them and never any suggestion that they should be exterminated. This is partly because snakes neither hunt one down nor do they ruin crops – quite the opposite; their staple diet is rodents that would otherwise devastate stored grain and crops in the field.
The dangerous species can be divided into four types:
I was hesitant to include snakes in this book because, as I say, there is no resentment regarding them and Africa’s rural communities have never petitioned against their presence.
Most cultures have an aversion to snakes and, if a snake enters their living space, most people’s reaction is to kill it on sight, venomous or not. But it is interesting that the San people will pick up a poisonous snake and remove it from the camp so that children will not step on it. They do not see snakes as evil or in any way deserving of being slain without provocation2.
Snakes are anatomically strange creatures. Most species are incapable of exerting themselves to any extent, since only the left lung has survived the evolutionary processes that were necessary to make a snake’s anatomy what it is – just one long narrow rib cage. This remaining lung is so elongated that the rear end is almost non-functional. Nor do these animals have any antibodies in their blood – not in the normal sense anyway – and thus even an infective tick bite can kill a snake.
Thirty years ago I watched a newly caught four-metre-long (13-foot) black mamba in a glass pen rearing and striking at the glass pane separating it from those of us who were standing there. It struck with its mouth agape and we could see the mouth’s black interior (from which this grey-coloured snake earns its title). B.J. Keyter, director of the now-defunct Transvaal Serpentarium, who had just paid a large amount for this magnificent reptile, was worried that the snake might damage its fangs and then it would be useless to milk for venom. To distract the snake Dennis Groves, the curator at the time, threw a white mouse into its pen. The mouse ran up to the rearing snake and bit it in the side. Two days later the mamba died of infection from the mouse bite. ‘That’s the trouble with snakes,’ Keyter said afterwards. ‘They’re such delicate things.’3
Of the world’s 3 000 kinds of snakes, only 300 have well-developed venom apparatus and of these 50 are sea snakes that rarely bother humans. Only about 150 species of land snakes can be regarded as potentially dangerous to man. Every continent bar the Antarctic has its serpent population, although some have considerably more than others. Western Europe, for instance, has only a dozen species, none of them really dangerous. Asia does not have the variety of venomous species that are found in Africa but because of other factors – and because of the presence of the huge king cobra, which is said to be the most venomous snake in the world – each year thousands of Asians are killed. India itself loses far more people through snakebite than Africa, which has 200 million fewer people in a landmass 10 times bigger. Australia, which is unique in having more deadly snakes than harmless ones, records only one or two lives lost a year.
It is impossible to estimate the annual death rate caused by snakes but in June 1963 the World Health Organization (WHO) issued the following statement: ‘Forty thousand people are killed by snake bite every year according to conservative estimates … Most of the deaths, perhaps 70%, occur in Asia.’
In 2009 the WHO said envenoming4 resulting from snakebites is a particularly important public health problem in rural areas of tropical and subtropical countries in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. A recent study estimates that annually at least 420 000 envenomings and 20 000 deaths occur worldwide from snakebite. It warns though that these figures may be as high as 1 841 000 envenomings and 94 000 deaths. The highest burden of snakebites is in three regions: South Asia, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.5
Snakebite is primarily a problem of the poorer rural populations and affects mainly those involved in subsistence-farming activities. Poor access to health services in these settings and, in some instances, a scarcity of antivenin often leads to preventable deaths. Many victims fail to reach hospital in time or seek medical care after a considerable delay because they first seek treatment from traditional healers. Because most victims are young, the economic impact of snakebite can be considerable.6
Africa’s annual toll can only be guesswork and the figure 20 000 is the one most mentioned over the last 40 years. If the WHO’s maximum global estimate is sound, then 20 000 is plausible. There’s certainly no reason for the African toll to have dropped, considering the human population has more than doubled and traditional remedies are still sought, despite the fact that they are useless. Even where victims are taken to hospital or to a doctor, antivenom treatment is often shockingly inappropriate, antivenom is often not available and the staff is insufficiently trained. Yet many envenomed victims survive.
In 2003 Dr Roger Blaylock analysed 333 patients admitted to Eshowe Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal with snakebite.
Forty-one out of the 333 were non-envenomed, 282 exhibited painful progressive swelling, seven showed progressive weakness and there were three cases of minor envenomations that were unclassifiable. Offending venomous snakes (brought in dead) included Naja mossambica (Mozambique spitting cobra), Bitis arietans (puff adder), Atractaspis bibronii (stiletto snake – also known as the burrowing adder), Causus rhombeatus (common night adder) and Dendroaspis polylepis (black mamba). Most bites occurred on the leg in the wet summer months during the first three decades of the patients’ lives. The majority of patients used a first-aid measure.7
The paper describes some of the distressing symptoms but what is significant is that antivenin had to be administered to only 12 of the 282 patients who had definitely been bitten by venomous snakes. Five of the 12 developed an acute adverse reaction to the serum. And what is also noteworthy is the last four words of the paper’s abstract: ‘There was one death.’ It illustrates the importance of having hospital staff trained in treating snakebite. I have no doubt that had those 282 victims been admitted to most other hospitals in Africa – even in South Africa – there would have been fewer survivors. In fact South Africa, with 12 lethal species, records only 10 to 12 deaths a year, and some toxicologists feel that most victims die because of poor medical technique. A number die of fright or shock, even in cases where the dose might have been sub-lethal. Panic-stricken victims have been found trying to drink milk from a cow’s teats because they believed it helped neutralise the venom, while others have been found running until they drop because they thought that it would help. A number of deaths have been brought on because the victim drank alcohol, believing that it helps combat the venom. In fact it stimulates the heart and quickens the action of the venom.
A Nairobi safari firm instructs its employees to tell clients – if they are bitten on safari – that the snake was harmless. They are also told to say that the injection of antivenin is a precautionary measure and, presumably, if they apply a tourniquet (a once-routine technique but now unequivocally condemned) they pass it off as a practical joke. It sounds unnecessary and yet the idea is sound because the more a patient relaxes the slower the venom travels through the body. People have died from fright or autosuggestion after being bitten by a perfectly harmless snake. The first step in first aid is to reassure the victim and get him or her to relax and be still.
It is alarming sometimes to read the advice by professional hunters. Take T. Murray Smith who advised in the 1960s that puff adder bite wounds should be crisscrossed with a sharp knife or razor blade, that a tourniquet should be tied above and below the punctures and that the wound should be irrigated with permanganate8. In fact all three pieces of advice are dangerous. Permanganate has been carried all over Africa by hunters and explorers but it has long been proven worse than useless; cutting a snakebite wound would only help the poison enter the system more efficiently; and tying a tourniquet after an adder bite causes such terrible damage to the affected limb (gangrene) that it has to be amputated.
Africa’s most lethal snake is the black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis). I recall in the 1980s a man being bitten by one in what is now Mpumalanga Province on the northeastern side of South Africa. His wife drove him to the provincial hospital in Nelspruit, which was several minutes away from where he had been bitten, but found no doctor in charge. She was advised to take him to Komatipoort – 100 kilometres (60 miles) away – but the doctor on duty there said he did not know how to treat snakebite and advised the woman to take the now-unconscious man to his own doctor in Barberton another 130 kilometres (80 miles) away. The man died on the way.
Medical ignorance even today can be alarming. In May 2008 Michael Bester (74) was bitten twice on the inner thigh by a mamba he discovered in his house. He had flushed it out from behind the television set using an insecticide spray. He was taken to a doctor in Margate on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, who said he could not help and sent him, under his own steam, to Margate Hospital. The hospital admitted him but did not administer antivenin, for fear that he might be allergic. He died that night.
India is said to have the most lethal snake in the world – the king cobra – yet Africa’s black mamba is every bit as dangerous. Its range extends from KwaZulu-Natal on South Africa’s east coast to Ethiopia and across much of tropical Africa. It is the African species that gives its victims the least chance of survival. Unless help is at hand, death usually follows within the hour – three at most. Some victims die within 20 minutes. A full bite could inject 16 times the lethal dose and the victim dies of suffocation (the chest muscles collapse).
In 2008 a 28-year-old British student, Nathan Layton, who was studying to be a field guide, was attending a lecture at a college near the Kruger National Park at which a live black mamba was demonstrated to students. Layton was waving his arms about to encourage the snake to move when it suddenly reared and bit him on the finger. He snatched his hand away so fast he did not think the mamba had had time to inject venom. After the staff – all trained in first aid for snakebites – had examined the finger, the lecture continued9. After 20 minutes the student announced his vision was blurring and he quickly went into a coma, from which he never recovered. Less than three hours later he was dead.
Herpetologist and one-time curator of the Durban Snake Park and the Transvaal Serpentarium, Johan Marais, described an incident to me. Late one Saturday morning he was with an assistant, Crawford Coulsen, in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Durban. Coulsen was bitten in the calf by a large mamba and it took the man at least five seconds to shake the snake loose – long enough to have received many times more than a fatal dose. The pressure bandage in Marais’ snakebite kit – so essential for slowing the effects of snakebite – was missing. He reassured Coulsen as best he could and got him to relax in the reclined passenger seat of his car. Marais (a one-time traffic policeman in Durban) then drove at up to 220 kilometres per hour (140 mph) on the N3. He was planning to take his assistant to Durban’s Addington Hospital, where he was confident adequate help would be at hand.
After five minutes the victim’s lips became numb. After 10 minutes his speech became slurred. Then he lost consciousness. As Marais neared the turnoff to Westville just outside Durban, he decided to chance the local hospital, but he found himself in solid Saturday morning shopping traffic.
He cut across the highway, heading back to the main road to Durban. Knowing Durban particularly well, he raced through its back streets, arriving at Addington about 30 minutes after the bite had been inflicted. He dragged Coulsen by his armpits across the pavement and straight into the hospital lift, since he knew the ICU was on the first floor. The sister on duty was slow in answering the bell and, when he told her the circumstances, she expressed doubt about whether the snake had been properly identified. She then told him there was no serum in the hospital.
At that moment a doctor arrived and put the victim, whose breathing was now barely discernible, in an oxygen tent. Four hours later he was sitting up talking, having made a full recovery. No serum had been used; his body had metabolised the venom10.
The diurnal black mamba can grow in excess of four metres (over 13 feet) and is fortunately rare. Ironically, it is a ‘threatened species’ under the CITES agreement. It is not only Africa’s largest venomous snake, but it is also the fastest, being able to glide gracefully along the ground at 15 to 20 kilometres an hour (9–12 mph) with the front third of its length raised. Like all snakes, it is nervous and will slide away on detecting the footfall of a human (snakes lack ears) or when approached within 40 metres (44 yards), but when cornered it is likely to inflict several bites in quick succession.
I recall an incident in 1958 at Ubombo in KwaZulu-Natal when a black mamba bit two girls repeatedly, both of whom died within an hour. A few years back a healthy Springbok rugby player, who had been bitten by a mamba, took the old-fashioned remedy – a bottle of brandy. He died within six hours. It was the brandy that probably killed in this case; he had only been scratched and a little common sense would probably have saved his life.
There are probably more yarns about this snake than any other. In some ways its reputation and its manner of striking a person high up in the body is reminiscent of the king cobra. A story you read and hear with monotonous regularity is about a farmer who was cutting back some scrub with a panga when he grabbed a black mamba instead of a branch. The snake bit his arm. On his next stroke the farmer severed the snake; on his next he severed his arm to save his life.
There is another more common mamba in Africa, the green mamba (Dendroaspis angusticeps), which was until 1946 considered to be the same species as the black. It is more arboreal than the black and, according to some, not quite as deadly. It is also less likely to attack. Nevertheless C.J.P. Ionides, a legendary snake catcher in Central Africa in the mid 20th century, recalled an incident in 1959 near Newala in the Southern Province of Tanzania: three men, three women and two children died after a green mamba got into their hut. Ionides later caught the snake. The only survivor, he said, was a baby11. The fact that Ionides caught some 3 000 green mambas within a few miles of Newala shows just how numerous they are. It also illustrates just how non-aggressive they must be, because so few people are bitten by them. Ionides sent a consignment of 50 to Dennis Groves, when the latter was curator of the Johannesburg Snake Park (later the Transvaal Serpentarium), who emptied the sack into a large glass pen. The snakes took to a bush about the height of a man, which became a wriggling mass of snakes. Later I watched Groves climb into the pen and duck under the bush to adjust something. Marais agrees that the green mamba is much less reactive than the nervous black mamba and has less toxic venom, but says its bite should be treated with the same respect as the black mamba’s.
The mamba’s venom attacks the nerves and, in the case of the black mamba, is quickly absorbed. The ordinary snakebite kit with its two vials of antivenin is pretty useless for a mamba bite, since a bite would need a dozen vials at least. Marais advises large amounts of antivenin injected immediately and intravenously by somebody who is trained to give such injections. Then a pressure bandage should be tightly applied (as with a sprained ankle), beginning by winding it around the bitten limb from the bite site towards the heart. Saliva should be prevented from blocking the throat and artificial respiration may be beneficial until the victim can be admitted to hospital. A splint on the bitten limb will keep it immobilised and minimise spread of venom.
Many people, believing cobra and mamba venom is transported through the blood, resort to using a tourniquet to inhibit it. These days tourniquets, unless applied by somebody with medical expertise, should not be used, no matter what snake is involved – in any event cobra and mamba venom is spread largely via the lymph glands and not the blood.
The biggest and most widespread killer in Africa (excluding man and the malarial mosquito) is the nocturnal puff adder (Bitis arietans). It avoids extreme desert conditions, dense forests and altitudes above 2 000 metres (2 187 yards). Most of the estimated 20 000 fatalities from snakebite in Africa are due to this thickset snake, which, sluggish though it is, strikes too fast for the eye to follow. Marais is sceptical about the puff adder’s reputation. He says recent research indicates that the mortality rate for puff adder bite is quite low and that many of the previous serious bites in South Africa, especially in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, that were attributed to the puff adder turned out to be Mozambique spitting cobra (Naja mossambica)12.
Until the development of the high-speed camera, it was thought that the puff adder could strike backwards. In fact it can turn its head to strike forward at a speed that only a fast camera can capture. The species is normally sluggish and moves with a motion very much like that of a giant caterpillar, but when agitated it can move at speed in a typical winding serpentine manner. Puff adders are terrestrial but one was once found almost five metres (16 feet) up a tree and, like most snakes, they are good swimmers. They spend a great deal of time basking in the sun or keeping warm at night on bare patches of earth; since this is quite often on a footpath, barefooted children, who set up little vibration on the ground as they walk, are frequently bitten. Most victims are bitten below the knee.
The curved, needle-like fangs of a viper can be as much as 18 millimetres (three-quarters of an inch) long and are hinged; when the snake opens its mouth to strike, the teeth move forward so that they are pointing directly at the prey. In other words the prey is stabbed before the snake’s mouth closes over the punctures and, usually, a large amount of venom is injected. The venom is powerfully cytotoxic (cell-destroying), haemotoxic (destroying blood vessels) and cardiotoxic (attacking the heart), causing severe pain and swelling in the bitten limb as well as haemorrhages and nausea. Death is normally from secondary effects, often kidney failure. Survivors usually suffer serious necrosis.
In cases of puff adder bites, the use of antivenin is essential. Untreated, the bite usually kills within a day, though I recall an 18-year-old student at the now-defunct Transvaal Serpentarium near Johannesburg dying within 10 minutes – the snake had bitten into her vein.
There are five other dangerous adders in Africa, one of which is the heavy, exceedingly thick 1.5-metre-long (five-foot) gaboon adder (Bitis gabonica). It has the most beautiful markings – rather like autumn leaves – and its habitat is the forest floor. It packs a tremendous bite, which contains both neurotoxin and haemotoxin in fair quantity. These four-kilogram (nine-pound) adders are much bigger and heavier than the puff adder (which is a third shorter and a third lighter) and have broad heads shaped like a shovel, the bulging sides containing the venom sacs.
Dennis Groves, while at the Transvaal Snake Park, was bitten on his little finger by a gaboon adder and, although he received large injections of polyvalent serum13 within 30 seconds and was assisted by one of the world’s leading authorities on snakebites within an hour, his life hung in the balance for 12 hours and his finger had to be amputated14. Fortunately this lethal animal is good-natured – Ionides actually used the word ‘charming’ – and very rarely bites people. An acquaintance in Zululand learned this one day when he sat on a log and opened up his sandwich pack. He felt something soft move beneath his feet and saw it was a gaboon adder. He lifted his feet and the gaboon slid slowly away. Usually a gaboon gives a good warning when you get too near – it emits something between a growl and a hollow hiss, which is very audible and unmistakable in meaning.
The saw-scaled or carpet viper (Echis carinatus) of the more northern countries of Africa, the burrowing adder (Atractaspis bibronii) and the berg adder (Bitis atropos) are each capable of very serious bites but, apart from the first-named, no fatalities have been recorded. The carpet viper was described by Ionides as unusually aggressive and he mentioned that all 311 he had handled tried in the most determined way to bite him15.
Many authorities state that the genus Echis, to which the carpet viper belongs, results in more human deaths than even the puff adder16. I can find no numbers but as the genus Echis is found right across the barefoot world, from the West African coast (where the species E. leucogaster is found) to East and northeast Africa (E. pyramidum) and across the Middle East to India and Bangladesh (five species occur between North Africa and Bangladesh), this seems a fair assumption. Within Africa itself the puff adder, being far more widespread, is usually cited as the worst killer.
The carpet viper is unusually aggressive and strikes vigorously and often, but at least it gives fair warning by rubbing its scales together to produce a hissing sound.
Attesting to its notoriety, medical scientists were able to study 115 patients with envenomation caused by E. leucogaster in the savanna region of Nigeria ‘where victims of this snake may occupy 10% of hospital beds’17.
There is one more troublesome adder found almost throughout Africa barring the arid southwest – the ominous-sounding night adder (Causus rhombeatus). There are some interesting but very suspect stories about the night adder killing people. One that is often repeated concerns a farmer who was bitten and reputed to have sucked the wound to clear out the venom. Because he had a sore throat (or a gum ulcer) the venom caused his throat to swell suddenly so that he choked to death. Apart from this, I have not come upon a case where the night adder has killed, but, with venom sacs that go along one third of its body, it has the potential. While some herpetologists say that an injection of antivenin can be more dangerous than the night adder’s venom, Marais cites a case where a victim needed three days in hospital. He says the bite can cause serious, painful and quite alarming symptoms and must be taken seriously and medical aid sought18 .
‘It is much more pleasant to be bitten by a cobra [than, for instance, an adder],’ a snake catcher once said in all seriousness and you can see what he means. The cobra’s neurotoxin causes sleepiness, weakness, vomiting and partial paralysis within a fairly short time. The lungs collapse but the heart action, intensely accelerated, carries on and convulsions may precede death, which is usually from suffocation. Nerve poison usually attacks the anterior brain (medulla oblongata), which controls breathing. If the victim recovers, it is usually rapidly and there are rarely complications. An adder bite is extremely painful and can cause massive tissue damage, the effects of which can be manifest for years.
The yellow-and-black sea snake (Pelamis platurus), a cobra-like reptile with an oar-like tail, is perhaps the most ubiquitous, being found across the world. From time to time, offshore fishermen along the East African coast accidentally catch the snakes in their nets, but how many are bitten is unrecorded. Occasionally these snakes are washed up on beaches or even crawl ashore and traverse land for short distances, but I have found no instances of people being bitten inland. Most sea snakes prefer the shallows and estuaries but they can be found in mid-ocean.
Africa is unique in being the home of spitting cobras, the most notorious of which is the black-necked spitting cobra (Naia nigricollis), which can eject a fine aerosol of venom up to three metres (10 feet) in range. The effects are immediately painful and, if you have a scratch or a wound of some sort on the face, the venom can enter the body with possibly fatal results. The effect on the eyes is to cause an inflammation that might last days and can in extreme cases, if the eyes are rubbed, cause permanent blindness. In rural areas if someone is struck by cobra venom, the victim is placed on his/her back and has urine sprayed in his/her eyes. This is fine and probably quite dramatic and, while it usually works, plain water, milk, or any bland liquid will do just as well. The aim is to dilute the venom speedily.
The cobra’s spitting action is so expert that it is uncanny. The snake rears, spreads its hood, opens and shuts its mouth and there it is: as quick as that. The spray is pushed out with tremendous force through the tiny holes in the end of tubular fangs and from a distance of two metres (seven feet) it just cannot miss. It can eject quantities of venom three to four times in a few seconds.
A snake that can almost rival the black-necked spitting cobra when it comes to spitting is the infamous and quite common rinkhals (Hemachatus haemachatus), a dull-black snake on the South African Highveld. When it rears you can see the high gloss on its underside and the one or two broad white bands across its throat that give it its name (rinkhals, directly translated from Afrikaans, means ‘ring necklace’). Outside the Highveld it has creamy white bars across its back. This cobra-like snake is confined to Southern Africa and, like the black-necked spitting cobra, it has a highly toxic bite. Surprisingly, Marais asserts that as far as he is aware the rinkhals hasn’t killed anybody for the last 50 years and maybe longer19. But the bite causes dramatic and painful reactions – as well as unconsciousness and could well kill a person weakened by some secondary illness. The snake is so common in Southern Africa that it is surprising that no deaths have been reported in recent years. (Death from snakebite is not a notifiable condition.)
But with all Africa’s cobras – to which the rinkhals is related – providing you carry a snakebite kit, the chances of complete and rapid recovery, even after a full bite, are very good – and you do have a bit of time to find help. Dennis Groves was bitten many years ago at his home 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Johannesburg and, as his own supply of antivenin was discoloured and stale, he drove himself to Johannesburg General Hospital where they could not find any antivenin. He was beginning to feel dizzy. He was put into an ambulance and, with sirens wailing, was driven home and injected using the stale antivenin. He lost two bones in the back of his hand.
Africa’s cobras, as far as their bites are concerned, appear to be less dangerous than the two larger cobras of Asia. Nevertheless the cobras are probably responsible for many hundreds of the fatal snakebite cases on the continent of Africa. In South Africa, specifically, the Cape cobra accounts for most snakebite deaths, according to Marais, who says ‘Around 10 out of the dozen snakebite victims who die each year [in South Africa] are bitten by Cape cobras.’ He says most of the deaths are because of ignorance, very often the victim relying on some inappropriate traditional remedy but, if you apply a pressure bandage and get to professional help within a few hours, recovery can be expected.
There has always been some controversy over the species of cobra that Cleopatra used in order to commit suicide. The odds are it was the asp – or Egyptian cobra as it is sometimes known (Naja haje) – which is found all the way down Africa. The asp would have been the logical choice, as it had deep religious connections in Ancient Egypt; another reason is that political prisoners were usually given the choice of being tortured to death or dying by the bite of an asp. This was an odd choice, as the bite of the asp is supposed to be relatively painless, if a little messy. Paintings of a beautiful Cleopatra lying composedly and serenely, with her hands clasped and her gown smoothed down and with her handmaidens draped around, are more fanciful than accurate: although Cleopatra would have quickly gone into a coma, death would have been preceded by violent convulsions, copious salivation and evacuation of the bowel and bladder.
Many years ago I accompanied members of the Herpetological Society on a veld expedition in the Highveld near Bronkhorstspruit, 80 kilometres (50 miles) east of Johannesburg, to capture snakes for the Transvaal Serpentarium. I was surprised to find a dozen schoolboys among the 20 or so members, and even more surprised at the number of snakes the boys captured in the space of one summer morning – about 15 as I recall. These included a magnificent snouted cobra (Naja annulifera) and a 1.4-metre-long (four foot seven inches) rinkhals, which greatly excited the Serpentarium as it was the longest recorded at the time. The boys also captured two night adders, which they carried inside their shirts. It was the capture of the rinkhals that was particularly interesting because the group sat around it in a circle, with their feet stretched out but just – and only just – out of range of the snake’s strike. The snaked reared, spread its hood and sprayed its venom; those not wearing glasses or, in a few cases, goggles, shielded their eyes with their hands. When somebody behind the snake wanted to take a picture, he would lean forward and tap the rampant snake on the back of its hood and it would turn and strike, but its strike was surprising slow and easily avoided. It appeared to fall forward rather than lunge. I have noticed the same with the Indian king cobra and a black mamba. Fast as a mamba is along the ground, it is rather languid in striking. I was told your arm, used in a sideways chopping motion, can beat the mamba to the draw. In fact you can easily break the back of a rearing cobra by hitting it with a walking stick, should the need arise.
One of the few dangerous snakes of the colubrids in Africa is the boomslang (Dispholidus typus); until 1962 there was no antidote for its bite and any man who received a full bite was doomed to die a lingering death. It is interesting to note that Raymond L. Ditmars describes them as ‘mildly poisonous’20. In fact most zoologists considered them absolutely harmless and up to about the mid 20th century they were kept by children as pets.
The boomslang (Afrikaans for tree snake) is a longish, slender, arboreal back-fanged snake with, for a snake, conspicuously large eyes. It can be olive, bright green, yellow or brown and shades in between. It is usually very difficult to provoke into striking and Ditmars’ experience, where he describes half a dozen of them emerging from a box lashing and biting, is unusual indeed. Weight for weight, according to B.J. Keyter, their venom is the most potent of any snake in Africa21 but, fortunately, the snake’s fangs are set so far back it is difficult for the snake to latch onto a person. The venom needs a specific antivenin and a bite normally takes three to four days to kill.
An interesting case history is that of herpetologist Bert Mitchley who was bitten by a pet boomslang on his farm near Polokwane (formerly Pietersburg) in September 1961. Mitchley was bitten on the finger and the snake managed to hold on only for a second or two. He immediately motored the 300 kilometres (186 miles) to Pretoria General Hospital where the best toxicologists in the country worked on him. Nothing helped and within three days he was so black and blue from subcutaneous bleeding that he looked like a bad road accident case. He died on the fourth day.
Dennis Groves, greatly disturbed by Mitchley’s death, appealed (partly through the Star, the Johannesburg newspaper for which I worked) for boomslangs to be sent to the Snake Park. He received nearly 100 and, knowing that if he were bitten he would die, immediately began a daily milking programme. Only after he had collected enough venom could antivenin be produced22. It is stored to this day at the South African Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg, from where it can be flown to anywhere in Africa within a few hours – time enough to neutralise the venom. The reason for the rarity of the antivenin is the difficulty in getting supplies of boomslangs for milking, because those that are milked usually die in two or three weeks from lip canker.
There were men who emerged from the South American jungles a century or so ago with stories of anacondas 12 metres (40 feet) long. Some even claimed 30 metres (99 feet) long, which would have been so wide in girth people might have mistaken them for tube trains. When, a few years ago, the New York Zoological Society offered $5 000 for the first 10-metre (33-foot) specimen, the prize went unclaimed and remains so to this day; and thus the stories of giant anacondas died down. The fact remains that the biggest anaconda (belonging to the larger of two species, Eunectes murinus) ever collected was just short of six metres (20 feet) and nearly a metre (over three feet) in girth and weighed 107 kilograms (235 pounds). There are persistent stories of pythons (anacondas, boa constrictors and pythons belong to the family Boidae) in the Far East measuring 10 metres but I can find no authentication. Estimating a snake’s length is extremely difficult. In 2004 a captive Burmese python was said to be more than 14 metres (46 feet) long and people who queued to see it were happy to accept its reported length. The British newspaper the Guardian sent journalist John Aglionby with a tape measure to measure it. He did – it was under seven metres (23 feet)23.
As far as Africa’s rock python is concerned – it rates among the longest and heaviest snakes on earth – it seems doubtful that any have exceeded six metres. The snake would find it difficult to kill an adult human, although there are authentic instances of this on record. One involved a Malawian man named Hurly, who was working in 1961 at the Alpine Mine in what is now Mpumalanga. One day he saw a python’s tail sticking out of the bush and he grabbed it. The snake, which was longer than he had expected, threw two coils round him and began to constrict. Hurly fell to the ground and he and the snake rolled about for some time before the man managed to uncoil the reptile. He returned to the mine and, although shaken, showed no signs of damage. The following day he reported to the mine hospital with a severe headache. He was admitted and died the following day. An autopsy showed a ruptured spleen and kidneys.
Another case took place during the Easter weekend in 2009 near Malindi, Kenya. The BBC reported:
A Kenyan bit a python that had wrapped him in its coils and dragged him up a tree during a fierce three-hour struggle, police have told the BBC.
The serpent seized farm worker Ben Nyaumbe in the Malindi area of Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast at the weekend.
Mr Nyaumbe bit the snake on the tip of the tail during the exhausting battle in the village of Sabaki.
Police rescued Mr Nyaumbe and captured the 13ft (4m) reptile, before taking it to a sanctuary but it later escaped.
The victim told police he managed to reach his mobile phone from his pocket to raise the alarm when the python momentarily eased its grip after hauling him up a tree on Saturday evening. Mr Nyaumbe used his shirt to smother the snake’s head and prevent it from swallowing him.
His employer arrived with police and villagers, who tied the python with a rope and pulled them both down from the tree with a thud.
Peter Katam, superintendent of police in Malindi district, told the BBC News website: ‘Two officers on patrol were called and they found this man was struggling with a snake on a tree.
‘The snake had coiled his hands and was trying to swallow him but he struggled very hard. The officers and villagers managed to rescue him.’
Mr Nyaumbe told the Daily Nation newspaper how he resorted to desperate measures after the python, which had apparently been hunting livestock, encircled his upper body in its coils.
Supt Katam told the BBC the officers had wanted to shoot the snake but could not do so for fear of injuring Mr Nyaumbe.
He added: ‘It’s very mysterious, this ability to lift the man onto the tree. I’ve never heard of this before.’24
Jane Flanagan, a Johannesburg journalist, reporting from Johannesburg for the London Daily Telegraph in 2002, wrote of a ‘six-metre’ African rock python eating a 10-year-old boy near Durban – the first recorded man-eating incident for the species. She wrote:
For three hours other children hid up mango trees near the township of Lamontville, too terrified to flee, as the snake first trapped the 10-year-old and squeezed the life out of him, then swallowed him whole.
Police and snake experts found no trace of the child, or his clothing. They found nothing but flattened grass and a trail leading down to a stream.
The incident last week prompted widespread panic among the township’s 50,000 residents and great fascination among herpetologists across the country.
Eleven-year-old Khaye Buthelezi, who saw the extraordinary attack, was persuaded to revisit the site on Saturday.
His eyes darting nervously for signs of the python, Khaye showed where his companion had been gathering fallen fruit when taken by the giant snake.
‘The snake quickly wrapped itself around his body, pinning his arms to his side. He didn’t cry or scream and neither did the rest of us – we didn’t want the snake to come and take us as well,’ Khaye said.
‘The snake squeezed tighter and tighter around him until his eyes closed and his head fell back so I thought he was dead or had fainted. Then the snake’s mouth opened very, very wide and started to swallow him from the head down – his clothes and everything. It all took about three hours because it was dark when we saw it slither away and we finally came down from the tree.’
Snake experts and the police followed the python’s trail to a nearby stream, which the herpetologists said the snake would have used as an easy route to get away to digest its prey.
Craig Smith, the owner of a snake park in Durban, is one of those trying to find the python. ‘The children I spoke to had excellent detail about the snake’s markings and killing technique, which suggested that they were either reptile experts or had had the chance to watch something like this for a very long time,’ he said. ‘This will be the first time this species has been known to be a man-eater.’
He said the snake had probably just woken from its winter hibernation and was extremely hungry when the boy wandered into its path. ‘We have never had a case of an African rock python eating a human, but they are very opportunistic eaters and the snake was obviously hungry enough to think it could cope with a child,’ Mr Smith said.25
Johan Marais remembers the case well and recalls going out to the site ‘to try to make sense of it’:
Firstly, the snake was never found, which is most unusual as a large python with a large meal cannot move very far. The whole community went looking for the snake. The site is next to the Umlaas canal which was in flood at the time and the theory was that the snake had come out of the canal, up a steep concrete slope, caught and swallowed a young boy and then disappeared. The two friends who reported the missing boy gave quite meticulous accounts of the event but their accounts differed. Herpetologists who visited the site were very sceptical but never followed up to find out whether the boy had, by some other means, disappeared or perhaps drowned in the canal. Regarding the snake – the Southern African python (Python natalensis) reaches a maximum size of around 5.5 metres [18 feet] and such a snake would certainly be capable of eating a young boy. It easily consumes small antelope such as impala.
It is highly unlikely that any humans have been killed by pythons in South Africa and searches of the literature reveal only two or three deaths in Africa.26
Ugandan newspapers reported in 1951 that a 13-year-old boy had been swallowed but the python had been forced to disgorge the body. In 1973 another newspaper reported that a Portuguese soldier had been discovered in the stomach of a snake. In 1979, a 4.5-metre (15-foot) python tried to swallow a 13-year-old boy but after being hit by stones it regurgitated the body and retreated. The boy was 1.3 metres tall (four foot three inches) and weighed 45 kilograms (99 pounds).
The python, whose teeth are needle-sharp, can inflict terrible bite wounds. Ionides records a woman on the shores of Lake Victoria being ‘thrown down by a python which savagely bit her causing her serious injury’27. A friend who was bitten on the hand by a python showed me his swollen spiked hand the next day. Judging by the damage of that one bite, several bites would indeed be serious.
In the 1960s I watched 18-year-old Dawie Field, who was then a slight young man, demonstrate how to catch a python. He selected a 4.5-metre python weighing 59 kilograms (130 pounds) at the Transvaal Serpentarium and provoked the snake into attacking him. At one point he fell into a swimming pool (on purpose) and, although the snake had three coils around him, one of them around his neck, Field never appeared to be in trouble. When the snake began to constrict him, Field uncoiled it from the tail and the snake did not have the strength to resist. ‘The secret,’ said Field, ‘is always to keep one hand free. I think if it had pinned both my arms I would have been in trouble.’
Anatomically, pythons differ from boa constrictors (Constrictor constrictor), by lacking a certain bone in the head, by living in a different environment – pythons prefer the bush and boas the forest – and by laying eggs where boas, being viviparous, produce live young. Both pythons and boas differ from other snakes by having vestigial pelvises and vestigial hind limbs and by possessing paired lungs.
The African or rock python (Python sebae) and the Southern African python (P. natalensis) used to be common south of the Sahara right down to the Eastern Cape, but pythons have not been seen south of KwaZulu-Natal in recent years and the two species are now considered ‘endangered’ and ‘threatened’ throughout their range28. Their main threats are the leather industry, where python skins are used for handbags and shoes, and traditional healers who use python fat as an ointment for various ailments; both pay high prices for pythons. Pythons are generally respected throughout Africa for their role in patrolling cane fields for cane rats (Thryonomys – known as grass cutters in West Africa). Young pythons live almost exclusively on rodents but when fully grown they can be a nuisance where livestock is concerned, taking anything up to the size of goats. In the wilds, the large ones eat warthogs, medium-sized antelope and even young crocodiles.
When you consider the world’s array of highly venomous serpents, you cannot help wondering why nature equipped snakes with such powerful venom, when all they need it for is to paralyse or kill small creatures. Snake venom is certainly not for defence; it is far too slow acting for that. Even the faster-killing snakes are quite unable to immobilise an attacking animal quickly enough to save their own skins. Their venom, powerful though it is, is still pretty well useless against owls and eagles and birds such as the secretary bird, which kill snakes with impunity. I have watched a secretary bird in the Free State pick up and swallow three small snakes in one spot in a few seconds. Many snakes depend upon their hiss to warn approaching animals, but this often invites attacks; dogs, cats and several species of wild animals, particularly mongooses, will go for a rampant snake, killing it long before the effect of the snake’s bite kills them. We can only wonder about the reason behind the evolution of a black mamba’s or a gaboon adder’s huge reservoir of venom – a mysterious cocktail of protein and enzymes – when its main diet is rodents. A fascinating conundrum.
It is a misapprehension that the African veld is crawling with snakes. There are certainly plenty about and, if you know where to probe for them, you can soon find some. On the other hand, I know people who have lived their lives in Africa and never seen a snake. Even in the most infested parts, you would be lucky to catch a glimpse of more than half a dozen a year unless you spent your time in the veld. Professional hunter J.A. Hunter, in a letter to Denis L. Lyell, said that he saw only about one snake a month on his safaris29. Yet John Hillaby, in his journey to Lake Rudolph on the border of Kenya and Ethiopia, passed through a particularly bad area when, it seems, the time of day and the temperatures were just right, since he saw several carpet vipers – particularly deadly reptiles – on each side of the track. He literally had to watch every step30.
I have seen only four or five cobras in the bush in Africa and yet they are at least as common as, for instance, chaffinches in England. The thing about snakes is that they hide away and go into a state of lethargy when the weather is cool, and they hide in rock crevices when the weather is too warm: their temperature tolerance is very narrow indeed. The asp, for example, is found widely through most of Africa, but you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who has ever seen one. Oddly enough, the first one I saw was in 1971 in a garden in Parktown, a built-up suburb of Johannesburg. It was fully grown and had probably been driven from its habitat – a north-facing rock face and therefore warm in winter – 500 metres (550 yards) away, by the building of the M1 motorway.
When it comes to precautions against snakebites, the most fundamental is at least wear shoes, preferably boots. But telling this to barefoot Africa is like Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal words asking why the bread-starved poor of Paris did not eat cake. Raymond L. Ditmars claimed that, if the rural people of India wore shoes, snakebite deaths would be halved. He said, once footwear became obligatory in India’s cane fields the death toll from snakebite dropped dramatically31. Apart from the protection that thick leather shoes afford, they also set up a vibration that bare feet do not, which snakes lying on the path will detect and move off. I was told by a snake hunter that if, for some reason, you are crawling along the ground and you come nose to nose with a snake, blow gently in its face and it will move away.
As far as snakebite kits are concerned, there is a strong argument these days in favour of dispensing with them. After all, they are useless against the bite of a mamba – and with all other species of snakes there is time to reach a hospital and receive professional help.
It can be said of any snakebite (with the exception of the black mamba) that antivenin is unnecessary if an intensive care unit is within reach. Once on a life-support system, the body will metabolise the venom.
When you examine the evidence, the chances of being bitten by a snake are very small indeed. In South Africa – despite the numbers of people walking barefoot or bare-legged across the veld, despite 27 potentially dangerous species and 12 that have been known to kill – of the few thousand annual snakebite cases, nearly all are from non-venomous or only mildly venomous snakes or are ‘dry bites’, where no venom is injected. As mentioned earlier, Dr Roger Blaylock’s findings at Eshowe Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal – one of South Africa’s most snake-infested areas – put snakebite in perspective.
In spite of the bare legs, in spite the high snake population and in spite the lack of hospitals in areas where snakebite is frequent, only 10 to 12 people – out of a population of around 50 million – die from snakebites in a year in South Africa.
While South Africa is fortunate in having the best medical resources in Africa, the picture north of the Limpopo River is very different.
Johan Marais, who has written several books on snakes, including a book on snake identification and modern treatment methods32, points out that ‘very often a snake will strike but it does not put its mind to injecting venom’. ‘Dry bites’ are common. He says, ‘We see a lot of dry bites among snake handlers. I have received three such bites – from a Cape cobra, a boomslang and a rinkhals.’33 Marais, who has travelled the world in search of snakes, no longer carries a snakebite kit; he carries only a crepe (pressure) bandage in a general first-aid kit. All the same, he says antivenins today are fairly reliable and cover almost all the world’s dangerous snakes. Throughout most of Africa, you can buy a polyvalent serum, which covers cobra and adder bites, with the exception the boomslang, which needs specific antivenin. A problem can arise in that a lot of people are allergic to antivenin.
It was S.K. Sutherland of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Melbourne, Australia, who developed the now-universally used life-saving technique involving tightly bandaging the bitten limb. This has superseded the tourniquet as a means of impeding the spread of venom through the body. The trouble with the tourniquet was, that if applied for an adder bite (an adder’s haemotoxic venom is a powerful coagulant), it would result in massive local damage and, frequently, gangrene. Even for the neurotoxic cobra bite, a tourniquet is only a marginally useful technique.
In dismissing the snakebite kit (as far as the layman is concerned), Marais points out that, in the case of a mamba bite, a victim would need 180 millilitres (six fluid ounces) of antivenin, whereas the standard kit has 20 millilitres (0.7 fluid ounces). And, for other kinds of bites, antivenin is a pretty crude remedy anyway, when a hospital or doctor is within reach.
The former Rhodesian Army, during the bush war of the 1970s, carried no snakebite kits at all. Instead it relied on cortisone. This was in the belief that it is best to subdue the symptoms and get the victim to hospital. The problem with this is that cortisone has to be injected intravenously and this requires skill. It can also have serious pharmacological effects. Marais believes village headmen and safari organisers should appoint at least one of their number to take a first-aid course with the Red Cross or St John Ambulance, which includes training in intravenous injections. He says that doctors on safari should also familiarise themselves with modern methods of snakebite treatment.
A recent theory is that electric shocks can break down venom. A South African snake park kept a cattle prodder for this purpose in its first-aid room. Some farmers carry battery extension leads just for this purpose – to apply electric shocks to the bite site.
Marais says the theory has no validity at all.