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Every year in India, 46,000 people die due to snake bites and about 146,000 people become disabled. A unique experiment has been conducted in Brazil to find out why snakes bite. Like India, in Brazil too, 27,000 people become victims of snake venom every year. It ranks fourth in the world among the countries most affected by snakebites. These figures are scary but what is even more worrying is the lack of research related to snakebite. Apart from overcoming this problem by finding anti-venom, it is also important to understand the behavior of snakes scientifically. It should be investigated why some snakes bite humans. With this intention, Joao Miguel Alves-Nunis, a researcher at Brazil’s Butantan Institute, has done the unprecedented work of getting himself bitten by a snake.
He got himself bitten more than 40,000 times by Jararaca, the most poisonous viper in South America. The results obtained after taking such a huge risk have been published as a scientific report in the Nature Journal. What was the experiment? Alves-Nunis said in a conversation with Science Journal, “Research on snake behavior is not usually done in Brazil. Most research does not pay attention to the factors that cause snake bites. If you are suffering from malaria, If you study the parasites that cause it, you can do research on the parasites that cause it, but until the mosquito that is its carrier is studied, the solution to the problem cannot be found. As of now, the general understanding is that the parasites attack only when they occur. You can touch them or put your feet on them. However, this was not proven in our research. Alves-Nunis told the journal that the best way for this research was to put the snake face to face. Kept in a cage.
After that, wearing special shoes covered with foam leather, he stepped lightly near or on the snake so that it would not get injured. This experiment was done 30 times on 116 snakes, that is, in total Alves-Nunis stepped 40,480 times to get bitten by the snake. What the results say: According to the information gathered from this risky experiment, the smaller the snake, the greater the chance of biting, the second important thing is that female snakes are more likely to bite. It has also been found that snakes behave more aggressively during the day and in summer, says Alves-Nunis. The incidence of bites is higher, and the majority of bites are by female snakes. Also, this study shows that where the snake is touched also plays a role in the bite. There is a high chance that the snake will bite in self-defence, whereas the fear probably reduces if the snake touches its tail or any other part of the body.
All this information is expected to increase knowledge about snakebites and prove useful in such remote places where incidents of snake bites are high, but antivenom is not readily available. Condition of India: There are 300 species of snakes found in India, although only 60 of these are said to be poisonous or moderately poisonous. The sad thing is that almost half of the snakebite incidents in the world occur in India. Obviously this research is very useful in that respect. This problem was declared a Neglected Tropical Disease by the World Health Organization in 2017 itself. The vaccine used for snake bites in India is suitable to treat the venom of only four species. This simply means that to deal with this problem, there is a great need to widen the base of research related to the types of snake bites and antivenom as well as the behavior of snakes living in the diverse geographical conditions of India, in India, like in Brazil. Is..
