BBC Natural World: One Million Snake Bites

Ever since the Garden of Eden,

humans and snakes have had a difficult relationship.

And nowhere more so than here, India.

One of the world's most crowded countries,

and home to over one billion people.

A recent scientific survey has confirmed

what some have long suspected.

India is facing a hidden health problem of epidemic proportions.

It's on a collision course with its snake population,

and the human casualty count is far, far greater than official estimates.

Reptile expert Romulus Whitaker has committed his life to conservation.

Long ago, he realised protecting India's snakes would be impossible

without first factoring in human welfare.

Armed with this new data,

and more than three decades of field experience,

Rom is about to investigate the natural history

behind these incredible statistics,

and find out why India has become the land of one million snakebites.

India is one of the snakiest countries in the world,

and home to an estimated 65 species of venomous snakes.

Of these, 15 have been known to cause human deaths.

For centuries, an accurate figure for the number of people

bitten and killed by snakes in India has been simply unknown.

Until now.

At his farm in South India, Rom's received some interesting reading.

I'm looking at an absolutely fascinating report just out,

and it's about numbers of snakebite deaths in India.

This is based on something called a Million Death Study, and it's not

hospital records, it's not records from state government sources.

This was based on interviewing families

and households all over India to find out

the causes of death, and snakebite deaths are incredibly significant.

If the survey is accurate, each year India suffers 50,000 deaths

from as many as one million snakebites.

Comparing this to Australia, home to double the number

of venomous snakes, yet with only

an average of three fatalities per year,

and the extent of India's problem becomes very apparent.

These statistics, compiled by Toronto University's Centre for Global Health Research,

suggest a mortality rate far in excess of any official estimates,

which have been as low as 1,400 deaths every year.

The cat's really out of the bag now.

Snakebite is an extremely serious problem in India.

The estimates of close to 50,000 deaths by snakebite per year

are absolutely way, way above the previous estimates,

and of course way above the official government statistics.

And something does need to be done, and now.

Armed with this new data, Rom sets out to explore the natural history

behind the report's chilling statistics.

He needs to find out which snakes are doing the biting,

which bites are fatal,

and what can be done to mitigate this soaring human death toll.

But for a mission of this magnitude, Rom is going to need some help.

He's come to visit some old friends.

The Irula, a southern Indian tribe, are in Rom's opinion quite simply

the best snake catchers in the world.

All the Irulas I see here, including some of the women,

are snake catchers from way back.

Their faces are etched in my memory,

but they're all part of the original gang that started...

30 years ago? 35 years ago? God, long time!

Rom has shared most of his extraordinary life in India

and his passion for snakes with the Irula.

Together, their knowledge and experience is unrivalled.

To understand why so many of his fellow Indians are

losing their lives to snakebite, Rom will team up with his son Samir,

a scientist and biotechnology graduate.

And Kali, one of the Irula's finest.

Rom first heard about the Irula in the 1960s.

The young snake-obsessed American had found a tribe whose knowledge

and experience of these remarkable legless lizards

match his own passion.

We're just arriving at the headquarters

of the Irula Snake-Catchers Co-Operative. Here's where

all the snakes are brought, the venom is extracted, the venom is processed.

It's a little place, but a lot gets done here.

Probably most of the venom being supplied for anti-venom

all over India is being produced right in this little place. Morning.

The Co-Operative provides the Irula people with a sustainable

livelihood, which in turn has saved countless lives.

At present, around 80% of the anti-venom produced in India

is made from venom sourced by the Co-Operative.

An effective polyvalent anti-venom, a one-shot cure

for all of India's venomous snakes, is still a long way off,

and Rom also knows it will never be a magic bullet.

The answer to India's snakebite epidemic is going to need

a better understanding of many factors.

If the ability to deliver fatal venom were the only qualification,

there'd be one snake that stands literally head and shoulders

above the rest as India's deadliest.

Growing up to five and a half meters long

and capable of delivering colossal amounts of venom in a single bite,

the king cobra is the world's largest venomous snake.

It's found in undisturbed jungle and preys upon other snakes.

Its Latin name, Ophiophagus Hannah, translates as "snake eater".

Rom is visiting Agumbe,

a place where he's spent many years working to protect the king.

We're heading over to the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station,

which I set up about five years ago. We're just about to go and meet

Gowrie Shankar, who's been heading the king cobra study

for several years now.

Hey, man. How's it going over there?

Good, good. How are you? Really good.

We just got a call that a king cobra has been sighted

in a farm down here,

and the farmer is very worried about

doing his work with his cows and ploughing the field,

so we're going to see if we can help him out with this situation.

That's perfect!

Good hiding place! Yeah, I see him there. Really?

There, there. Oh, yeah.

OK. It's a big one too.

Let's lift some of this stuff aside.

If it comes that side, just grab it.

He's moving. OK. I'd just like to get some of this out of the way,

because we need a clear field.

He's up here, he's up here. OK. If he's coming out,

it might be easier than removing the whole bunch of junk.

Let's see what happens.

Slowly, slowly. All right. He's a big guy, he's a big male.

Wow, let me bring him from the top here, if possible.

OK, now what we want to do is

to at least get these photographs. Get one back shot.

Got it? Let's get him from this side. Once you reverse...

I'll come this side and you go that side. Go, go.

Oh, he's coming, OK.

Watch out, you're lower than he is.

You know, the hoods of king cobras are basically like our fingerprints.

Each one is different, and by getting

very clear photographic documentation,

we'll be able to identify one snake from the other.

One second. Watch out, watch out!

Samir, get the bag around.

Ready?

Keep the bag low, on the ground.

Yes, got him.

That is too good, man! Yes!

I mean, what a co-operative snake!

He says "Don't let it go very close to my house!"

Well, between you and me, since we're speaking our own language,

he's got to be let go within his own home range, basically.

Just around the corner is probably where we have to go.

Rom knows that statistically, king cobras pose

an almost negligible risk to humans, and in all the years

he's worked with the king, he can recall only a handful of deaths,

invariably due to human provocation.

Sitting a few feet in front of me is

the largest venomous snake in the world, the king cobra. Been known to

grow to over 18 feet long in Thailand, and here in south India,

the record length is about 15 feet, seven inches.

This guy is close to 12 feet long. He's got enough venom to, they say,

kill an elephant, and certainly at least 10 or 20 human beings.

If you consider the snake's hardware, so to speak,

this guy is stacked up to be public enemy number one.

And yet he hardly bites anybody,

because he knows how to keep out of people's way.

When you consider the other venomous snakes in India, the cobra, kraits,

the Russell's viper and the saw-scaled viper,

they're snakes which come in contact with people

every single day, but the king cobra,

primarily living in rainforests like this,

rarely comes into contact with people, and when it does,

it sees the people first, it's very alert,

very aware, incredibly good eyesight,

and it gets the hell out of there as fast as it can.

Just the way a good snake should.

The king cobra is a classic case of not judging a book by its cover,

illustrating the complex,

sometimes counterintuitive nature of India's snakebite problem.

Far less imposing snakes are responsible for far more deaths.

OK, a snake like this, if he wanted to kill me,

if he wanted to kill any of us, he very well could.

But the point is, the king cobra wants nothing more than

just to keep away from human beings.

We've all seen these TV snake molesters who are always going,

"Whoa! What a hero I am!

"Oh, how dangerous this is!"

But I think this is a really good opportunity

for me to show you exactly how dangerous this snake is.

Need I say more?

So if the king cobra isn't part of the problem, then which snakes are?

Rom and his team are heading to the plains of Tamil Nadu,

in search of a snake that may very well be India's number-one killer.

This land has been shaped by agriculture and manual labour,

which Rom suspects are two key factors

in making this state a snakebite hot spot.

It's abundantly clear that it is rural people, the workers,

the agriculturalist farmers, who are getting bitten by snakes.

These are the people most at risk from snakebite,

simply because they're putting their feet

and their hands where snakes live.

The team starts the hunt, and it's not long before

a little healthy father-son competition begins to surface.

I reckon we're going to get many more snakes than Rom.

Younger team, ready to go!

The banks and field edges are peppered with rat holes.

To locate the ones occupied by snakes,

the Irula hone in on the subtlest of clues.

The Irulas are looking for signs like this,

and I think you can pretty clearly see this is nice and smooth.