It all started with a snake bite in 2005. Dr. P. Gauri Shankar was saving a king cobra, when suddenly a ten feet long snake attacked him.
Founder-Director of Kalinga Foundation (Kalinga Serpent is Kannada for king cobra) is located in the Agumbe rainforest in the Malnad region of the Central Western Ghats. Shankar was lucky. “The snake didn’t inject enough venom because I reacted quickly… not giving it a chance to get a hold of me and inject the venom,” he says. But even a small amount of venom caused severe swelling and pain. . “Before vaccination, snake bites were treated symptomatically, as we had before vaccination,” he says.
While a polyvalent antivenom is available in India, which is often used to treat bites from the “big four” snakes in the country – Russell’s viper, saw-scaled viper, common krait and Indian cobra – it does not work against Is. King cobra bite. But since, until recently, it was believed that the king cobra was a single species widely distributed in many parts of Asia, they resorted to some vials of antivenom from Thailand that they had, hoping that it would Will work on cutting. ,
“But my body did not accept it. I couldn’t breathe and had blisters everywhere,” recalls Shankar, who ultimately did not opt for the treatment. “Although we had some idea that Thai king cobra antivenom did not work on Indian king cobras, this incident proved it,” he says.
Gauri Shankar has been saving king cobras for decades. , Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
four species
Shankar’s near-death experience left him wondering why the antivenom did not work, as India’s king cobra species was thought to be similar to that of Thailand (in addition to the Indian subcontinent, king cobras are found in Southeast Asia and southern China). go).
“That’s when I started thinking they might be two different species. So I decided to do my PhD in it,” says Shankar, who registered for his PhD in 2013, and spent the next decade closely investigating the morphology and genetics of these snakes. This research confirmed their guess: there was more than one species of king cobra. In fact, he and his colleagues found that king cobras are a group of at least four distinct species, overturning a 186-year-old belief that they were a single species.
Since 1836, when Danish naturalist Theodore Edward Cantor first described the animal, the king cobra has been considered a single species. However, there was one scientist who had doubts – Sri Lankan paleontologist Paulus Edward Pieris Deraniyagala. According to Shankar, Deraniyagala suggested in the early 1960s that the animal had several subspecies, but “the scientific community did not accept it because there was no proper evidence,” he says.
look for evidence
Shankar spent the next ten years traveling around the country and the world, visiting museums, to gather material to support his hypothesis. Ultimately, he and his colleagues published a groundbreaking study in 2021 that proved there are four distinct, independent lineages of king cobras (Ophiophagus hannah). “In that paper, we delineated their populations and discovered that there was 1-4% genetic difference between them… mostly focused on the genetic and distribution part,” he says.
More recently, in 2024, Shankar and his team showed that there are four species of king cobras. These include the Northern king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), the Sunda king cobra (Ophiophagus bangarus), the Western Ghats king cobra (Ophiophagus kalinga) and the Luzon king cobra (Ophiophagus salvaton), all of which show clear morphological differences, including their banding patterns. “I went into more detail in the second paper, where the morphological characters were studied and given names,” says Shankar. “We didn’t give names in the first one because we weren’t sure about the morphology.”
Why does it matter?
Resolving species confusion is important for several reasons. Firstly, the strategy to treat king cobra bites will have to be reconsidered, given that there is only one antivenom available in the country to treat king cobra bites – the one they were given from Thailand, with very little available here at present. people have. , “We import a small amount of anti-venom for our (professional snake catchers’) safety, but I have proven that it does not work after I have been bitten,” says Shankar. That more work needs to be done on this in India. King cobra antidote. “We are currently not prepared… in fact, are still struggling with anti-venom for the big four species. But now that everyone knows there are different species, we will focus on that.
And two, the recent discovery has important implications for our conservation efforts. For example, until now, because the king cobra was seen as a single species whose range extended from India to the Philippines, it was considered a widely distributed species and was listed as ‘Vulnerable’ by the IUCN. Was classified as. However, this may change. Each of the four species, including the one found in the Western Ghats, is probably in a more uncertain situation due to its spatial distribution. “Species in the Western Ghats are already under threat on a large scale due to habitat destruction,” he says. “We are now asking the IUCN to change the status of the Western Ghats king cobra to ‘endangered’. ,
Gauri Shankar believes that training and outreach are essential for conservation. , Photo Credit: Suzanne Bernard
fascinating insight
The king cobra belongs to the Elapidae family, which also includes many other venomous snakes, including cobras, coral snakes, kraits, mambas, sea snakes and sea kraits. They (king cobras) have a long evolutionary history, dating back at least three to five million years, says Shankar, adding that he suspects the Luzon king cobra, which is endemic to the island of Luzon in the northern Philippines, is the world’s oldest cobra. One of the oldest species. ,
“They then began to flow into the rest of Southeast Asia… into India and the Western Ghats,” he says, adding that because they became geographically isolated, king cobras have evolved into at least four distinct subspecies. -Evolved into separate species. Time. “As populations become isolated, reproduction and gene flow stops because they are not interacting with each other,” he says. “Then they become an independently evolving species.”
The genus name, Ophiophagus, comes from the Greek words ophi (snake) and phagos (food), an allusion to the snake’s diet. “King cobras can eat at least 30 species of other snakes,” explains Shankar, adding that these animals also exhibit cannibalistic behavior, preying on smaller members of their own species.
Shankar shares some other interesting tidbits about these animals: they can grow up to 15 feet, make growling sounds, males engage in physical combat to impress females, and they are the only species of snakes Those who make nests. Calling the king cobra one of nature’s best engineers, he revealed, “I have monitored about 50 nests, and they are beautiful.” “We often get 6000-8000 mm of rainfall, but not a single drop reaches the nest chamber.”
love the king
Shankar has been fascinated by snakes for as long as he can remember, having caught one for the first time at the age of 13. “We shifted to a house in KR Puram area,” he recalls, remembering that part of Bengaluru was surrounded by paddy fields. “The fields were quite isolated at that time. During the monsoon season, the premises of that house would get flooded, bringing with it snakes like the buff-striped and checkered keelback. “My first snake was a buff-striped keelback,” he recalls.
He had his first encounter with a king cobra at the zoo in Bengaluru’s Bannerghatta National Park, where he often ran during college hours, and was immediately trapped. By then he was already saving snakes, mostly rat snakes and cobras, and by the late 1990s, he decided to do it professionally, and founded the Bangalore Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BSA). Joined what is now called Karuna Animal Welfare Association). Karnataka) and later the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Center for Herpetology. “At Croc Bank, we had 18 king cobras as captive-bred specimens, so I started managing them,” says Shankar.
In 2005, he helped Crocodile Bank founder Romulus Whittaker establish the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS), working there for the next seven years, until he left to establish the Kalinga Center for Rainforest Ecology and the Kalinga Foundation. Gave. Kalinga Center for Rainforest Ecology. “For my PhD, I had to stay in my own field. My wife and I liked Agumbe and wanted to settle there,” says Gauri Shankar, who was awarded a doctorate from Maharaja Shriram Chandra Bhanja Dev University in 2023.
umbrella species
Talking about their work in Kalinga, Shankar says that as an organization, they have rescued around 500 animals from distressful situations and trained around a thousand snake rescuers. And while research doesn’t hold back – he has written about 11 scientific papers on king cobras – he is equally passionate about outreach and education, relying on myriad media.
Shankar strongly believes that conserving the Western Ghats King Cobra, an apex predator in the rainforest ecosystem, can help save the rainforests where they are found. “Rainforests are really important because 68% of the carbon sink happens there; Without them, we would be in big trouble,” he says. Fortunately, because of the important role of the snake in religion and culture, many Indians not only tolerate it, but also worship it.
There is a concept of Nagaban or sacred grove for snakes in Karnataka, where the forest is completely untouched, says Shankar, who chose to name the Western Ghats species as Ophiophagus Kalinga as a tribute to the state that is so home to it. Provides respect and security. Iconic animals. “I wanted to tell the world that if these people can live so peacefully with one of the longest venomous snakes, why can’t you,” he says. “And I wanted every Kannadiga to feel this way.” But feel proud.”
(The official announcement ceremony will be held on November 22 at 4 pm at JN Tata Auditorium, Malleshwaram)
published – November 21, 2024 09:00 AM IST
