Snake Handling – Snake Keeping – Legal Aspects
Monday, April 20th, 2009
If you are not a trained snake-handler, avoid fooling with snakes and do NOT ever handle with bare hands, unless it’s a serious emergency. However, if inclined to do so or you need to handle snakes for study or photography, use a snake hook or better still, a snake grabber/ tong, specially designed for the job. Nowadays, there is snake handling equipment available in the market (especially, in the Western countries), which is professionally produced. Also, one should never handle venomous snakes when alone, even if you are an expert, unless there is emergency. One must learn handling of snakes, under the guidance of a well-trained snake handler. One must store live snakes in cloth-bags, which should be made of strong cloth and check for holes and weak points along the seams. Must replace these snake bags, at the beginning of every monsoon season, as these get weaker with exposure to moisture, and a snake can tear open the bag by pushing its head through weak cloth. Avoid handling snakes for fun or `show-off’’ or to be a `macho-man’; it is not worth it. Remember, anti venom serum also can cause death (some people are allergic to serums), in many cases it may lead to complications and result in ever lasting side-effects e.g. some experts have lost limbs. So, never fool around with snakes without a clear purpose.
ADVISORY:
- Never feed a snake with live rat, when its in a cloth snake-bag. Usually, snakes avoid attacking its prey in such close places, in effort to avoid any injury ensued from the scuffle for grabbing its prey. Snake will not attack it’s prey for long, will keep lying in ambush to administer a venomous bite to immobilize the prey and rat (prey) will remain alive. It will get enough time to attempt to make an escape from the bag, by chewing a hole through the snake-bag. It happened at my place, when a Russell’s viper made an escape at my place, in August 2000.
- Snake bags should be made of dark and thick cloth which is usually meant for trousers. In the West, one gets ready-made snake bags.
- Never pin down a snake and hold from the neck, very dangerous. Unless, you are doing some serious work and it needs to grab it’s neck.
- Never indulge in any kind of conversation, while handling a venomous snake. First of all, finish the handling of the snake, which is in your hands for specific purpose and place the snake in secure place and then talk. Many snake-handlers have got bitten in such a way.
- Snakes are known for making great escapes and give surprises all the time. Beware !!!
Snake Handling Equipment: Venomous snakes should never be handled with bare hands, no matter how expert one is. There are specially designed equipment/ gadgets being sold in the international market for herpetologists i.e. hooks,
WORD OF CAUTION: Please do not use locally made contraptions, which you have not been tested by yourself. Try and fabricate hooks with good material i.e. a broken golf club makes a very good snake-hook. Best is to buy a tested and tried equipment produced by a branded company, its worth any price. Always, make snake-bags of dark colour cloth, as snakes love dark area to be comfortable when disturbed.
Snake Keeping: Avoid keeping venomous or unknown snakes as pets. Remember, that they pose serious hazard not only to you, but also to your family and neighbours. Also, I advise that as Indians we should NOT try keeping snakes as pets and there are a few reasons for that. First of all, it is illegal to keep snakes as pets in India, all are protected under WILDLIFE PROTECTION ACT. Only a researcher could do that to study the behaviour of snakes, even then a formal permission from the wildlife department has to be sought for the purpose. It is hard to understand the requirements of snakes, especially at different times under different circumstances, for different purpose i.e. sickness, special diet, growth, baby feed, etc. Also, in India we do not have good support system for such pets i.e. special food, equipment, clinics etc. Snakes could die easily under stress, which is caused by frequent handling and variation in temperature around them. One of the most difficult aspects of snake-keeping, therefore, is gaining the expertise required to know when things are not right; spotting the subtle differences in behaviour patterns, which indicate that the animal is struggling to survive.
In India, snake-keeping is regarded as a somewhat suspicious occupation, carried out by a few, rather weird enthusiasts. We do not have any stock which is captive bred in zoos or pet-shops. All the snakes available through snake-charmers are caught from the wild, which means depletion of environment, affecting your ecosystem adversely.
So, I would like to advise you to never keep a snake as a pet and deny him his basic `rights of freedom’, as they are NOT meant to be in captivity. Also, avoid environmental depletion.
Legal Aspects: All reptile species are protected in India, through listing in the country’s wildlife conservation legislation – Wildlife Protection Act 1972. Keeping snakes without a proper legal permission would invite an `uncomfortable place’ in jail.
NOTE: Soon, I will be selling snake tongs and snake hooks, basically to raise funds for the Snake Cell and to help snake enthusiasts have easy access to snake handling equipment/gear.
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