Ophiophagy

Ophiophagy ("snake eating") is a specialized form of feeding or alimentary behavior of animals which hunt and eat snakes. There are ophiophagic mammals (such as the skunks and the mongooses), birds (such as snake eagles, the Secretary Bird, and some hawks), lizards (such as Crotaphtyus collaris), bullfrogs, and even other snakes, such as the Central and South American mussuranas and the North American Common Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula). In fact there is even an entire genus of snakes named after this habit, Ophiophagus, with species such as the venomous King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah).

Contents

1 Ophiophagy in myth and legend

2 Practical use

3 Immunity

4 External links

Ophiophagy in myth and legend

The mythic associations of snakes are discussed at Serpent.

A snake-eating bird of prey appears in a legend of the Mexica people, who gave rise to the Aztec empire, and it is represented in the Mexican flag: The Mexicas, guided by their god Huitzilopochtli, sought a place where the bird landed on a prickly pear cactus, devouring a snake. They found the sign on a island in Lake Texcoco, where they erected the city of Tenochtitlan ("Place of the Prickly Pear Cactus" – present-day Mexico City) in 1325. (In the Coat of Arms of Mexico this bird is depicted as a Crested Caracara. It is also possible that the bird was a Snake Hawk, a bird of prey which feeds almost exclusively on snakes. According to others, the bird was an eagle.)

The Mayans also had the legend of ophiophagy in their folklore and mythology.

Guatemala may derive its name from the Nahuatl word coactlmoctl-lan, meaning "land of the snake-eating bird."^[1]

Christian folklore associates snakes with evil (see serpent) and considers anything that destroys them good. An example for this tradition is Rudyard Kipling's short story "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" (in The Jungle Book), in which Rikki-Tikki, a mongoose, defends a human family against a pair of evil cobras.

Practical use

In some regions, farmers keep ophiophagic animals as pets in order to keep their living environment clear of such snakes as cobras and pit vipers (including rattlesnakes and lanceheads) which claim annually a large number of deaths of domestic animals, such as cattle, and attacks on humans. This is true, for example, of tamed mongoose in India. In the 1930s a Brazilian plan to breed and release large numbers of mussuranas for the control of pit vipers was tried but didn't work. The Butantan Institute, in São Paulo, which specializes in the production of antivenins, erected a statue of the mussurana Clelia clelia as its symbol and a tribute to its usefulness in combating venomous snake bites.

Immunity

Many ophiophagic animals seem to be immune to the venom of the usual snakes they prey and feed upon. The phenomenon has been studied in the mussurana by the Brazilian scientist Vital Brazil. They have antihemorrhagic and antineurotoxic antibodies in their blood. The Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana) has been found to have the most resistance towards snake venom. This immunity is not acquired and has probably evolved as an adaptation to predation by venomous snakes in their habitat.