King cobra (Ophiophagus hannah)

The heavy and muscular King Cobra can kill other snakes with its powerful venom. The snakes follow fangs grow to a length of 0.5 in. The Cobra punches them into its prey like hypodermic needles, and injects a powerful venom. The venom glands lies behind the eyes. The snake can then dislocate its jaw to engulf large prey.

The cobra uses its menacing hood to warn off other animals. Its neck spreads to form a hood with a double chevron marking on the back. Its skin is olive green, tan or black with pale yellow cross bands down the length of the body. The underbelly is cream or yellow. The cobra detects prey by flicking its tongue out to collect scents from the air. Inside the mouth, the tongue passes over the Jacobson's organ- a receptor that analyzes different scents.

The King Cobra is mainly found is Asia, you can find it in clearings, amongst bamboo theckets and in the borders of the forest. In Northern India, the cobra can be found in forest, and up into the foothills of the Himalayas. Cobras can climb trees with ease, but will rarely do so unless chasing his next meal. Cobras can also be found on farmland and in outlying parts of villages. As forest are cleaned, Cobra are increasingly encountered by humans.

The King Cobra preys on other snakes and lizards. It will attack venomous snakes and nonvenomous ones, such as small pythons. The cobra tracks prey by sight and by tasting the air with it's tongue. It strikes quickly and it's venom paralyzes the victims nervous system. The King Cobra can dislocate it's jaws like other snakes, and gradually work it's meal into its long stomach.

The King Cobra is active by day, it moves quietly through vegetation and deliberately avoids disturbances. If an intruder startles the King Cobra, it rears its head, spreads it's neck to form a hood and sways back and forth. This is intended to intimidate the intruder so the Cobra does not have to strike. If an intruder does not leave when warned the Cobra will strike quickly and deadly. The Cobras bite is little use against birds of prey, which swoop down from behind to strike the snakes head. The Cobra will hide in thickets to avoid these enemies.

In January, the male King Cobra starts to look for a mate. He tastes the air with his flickering tongue. Then, when he locates the female cobra, he will rub his chin along her body to calm her and to stimulate her for mating. After a month of mating the two snakes emerge from their hiding place. The female seeks out a secluded spot, she then excavates a shallow, circular depression in the ground up to 3 in. in diameter. There she deposits 40-50 eggs and remains on or near the nest until they hatch in 70 -77 days. The female defends her nest site aggressively. The male may also stay close by for a while to assist in defense. When the eggs hatch, the hatchlings are 12 to 25 inches long. Their venom, produces in small quantities, is just a powerful as an adults. As soon as all the young snakes have hatched, the female leaves them to look after themselves.

A King Cobra female will lay eggs about once per year. The King Cobra forest habitat is disappearing. In eastern Asia, the snake is killed to use in medicines and to eat. Although not yet endangered, the King Cobra has few allies and its population is likely to decline in the future.

What becomes a royal most? A skin that fits. Snakes shed their skin when they grow too big for the old skin in a process called ecdysis.

King cobras generally shed four to six times a year in a two week shedding cycle, but in their first year they shed every month.

Despite all this shedding, the number of scales and their arrangement remains the same throughout the snake’s life.

When the king starts shedding, it drinks water to help separate itchy old skin from the new one underneath. It then rubs against rough edges to start the peeling process. Besides new skin, the king uncovers new fangs, teeth, and tongue tips.

The change also means new eye coverings (like new contact lenses) and about ten days of half blindness Scales are a kind of thickened skin containing keratin, the same material as your fingernail. They protect the snake’s body the same way your nails protect your fingertips. They also reduce friction and make slithering easier. But they aren’t slimy; a snake’s skin is smooth and dry.

Scales on the under (ventral) side are larger and aligned together, like a bulldozer’s tread.

Potential mates find each other by sending “scent messages.” Both males and females give off a musk in the mating season. When a male picks up the scent of a nearby female he pursues her and rubs her with his head. If she’s not interested, he persists by using his head to butt and push her around.

These formidable creatures are surprisingly good at parenting. Baby king cobras get a royal welcome—king cobras are the only snakes that make nests for their eggs.

The Queen’s not pregnant, she’s gravid—the term for snakes that are carrying eggs. The eggs develop side by side along the female’s body.

A female snake can store sperm for several years, and can produce young two or three years after her last contact with a male snake. Scientists still don’t understand how she does that.

About two months after mating, the queen lays a clutch of 20-40 eggs. She will guard these on the nest for about two more months. During this time, she’s prepared to fend off any intruders, though she will generally shy away from humans.

Just before the babies emerge, the mother leaves. After her two-month fast, she has a powerful appetite. Experts think she may leave to avoid the temptation of eating her own young.

When they hatch, the brightly-marked hatchlings are good to go. About 14 inches (35 centimeters) long and as thick as your little finger, they emerge self-sufficient. Their venom is just as potent as an adult king cobra’s.

Once the young kings undergo their first molting at seven to ten days old, they realize that the rigors of birth have left them famished—and another creature discovers the perils of living in the realm of the king cobra.

Despite its aggressive reputation, the king cobra is actually much more cautious than many smaller snakes. The king only attacks people when it is cornered, in self defense or to protect its eggs.

Throughout its entire range from India to Indonesia, the king causes fewer than five human deaths a year—about one-fifth as many as caused by rattlers in North America.

King cobras are not actually cobras at all—they belong to a different genus. Besides being longer than other cobras, king cobras appear to be more intelligent. Zookeepers say that the king cobra learns faster than other snakes, and comes to distinguish its caretakers from strangers.

In the electric moment when a human first meets a king cobra, each often confuses the other’s motive.

In 1902, an explorer in India survived the encounter with a rare flash of understanding: “A four-meter-long (13 feet) king cobra slid past us, completely unimpressed, as if it wanted to say ‘Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone,’ and we did just that.”

It has a head as big as a man’s hand and can stand tall enough to look you straight in the eye

Its venom can stun your nervous system and stop your breathing.

Within minutes, neurotoxins stun the prey’s nervous system, especially the impulses for breathing. Other toxins start digesting the paralyzed victim.

Drop for drop, a king cobra’s venom is actually less lethal than a common cobra’s. The king more than makes up for it by delivering more venom per bite—as much as .2 fluid ounces (7 milliliters) of liquid.

That’s enough to kill an elephant, or 20 people.

The Indian system of Ayurvedic medicine has tested various cobra venoms for use in treating diseases such as tuberculosis and cholera.

In the United States, the study of cobra venom has yielded pain relievers such as Cobroxin, used to block nerve transmission and Nyloxin, used for severe arthritis pain.

The antidote arrives on horseback... or rather, via horse neck. A small, nonlethal dose of venom “milked” from the fangs of a live king cobra is injected into a healthy horse. Once the horse’s body has developed antibodies to the venom, blood is removed from the jugular vein. It’s then mixed with an anticoagulant and a preservative, and the antibodies are separated and stored as antivenin.

The king’s hood plays a big part in its fearsome “threat posture,” and is made by spreading the ribs in its neck.

The king can stand up to one third of its total length, or from three to six feet (one to two meters) high, and has the ability to move forward in the intimidating pose.

An upright posture without the hood extended is a friendly gesture and the snake often assumes this pose to see over bushes or tall grasses The king’s Latin name (Ophiophagus hannah) refers to its favorite meal— ophiophagus means snake-eater. Its culinary preferences probably gave the king cobra its English name.

King cobras prefer nonvenomous snakes like the rat snake, but they also dine on venomous Indian cobras, kraits, and even small king cobras, thus earning the ignoble title, ‘cannibal.’

With no limbs or cutting teeth, the king is unable to tear its food. However undignified, the king gulps down every meal whole.

Its digestive tract is like a long straight tube. Blunt teeth puncture the food and the venom’s enzymes start the digestive process. From the long stomach, food travels through the small intestine, the large intestine, and then out the cloaca.

The king’s aggressive reputation and its lethal defenses have inspired people to view its powers as godlike. In India and Southeast Asia, societies have long revered cobras and king cobras and placed them at the center of their most sacred rites.

Snake charmers do not really hypnotize cobras with their flute music. It’s often a sad con game in which an exhausted cobra is put on the defensive, yet conditioned (with pain) not to strike the flutist.

Snake charmers don’t necessarily catch their own cobras—they may buy them and have them defanged. Some charmers may know little about snakes, while others know as much about them as experts do.

In Myanmar (Burma), a local expert presents a huge king cobra to the village. The cobra’s basket is opened and as the snake rises to its full height, a Shan priestess walks forward, leans over and kisses it.

In 1982, one participant was bitten on the arm by an 11-foot (3.5 meter) king cobra. Amazingly, she developed no signs of poisoning. Shan’s may develop a partial immunity to king cobra venom through a traditional inoculation practice of scratching their skin with venom mixtures.

Most coup attempts occur against a vulnerable young royal: Wild boar and mongoose are notorious thieves of king cobra eggs. Hatchling cobras are susceptible to army ants, giant centipedes, civet cats, and more mongooses.

Leeches are pesky opportunists and abuse king and commoner alike. They lay dormant in the soil for almost half the year. When they emerge in the wet season, they follow movement and heat to find hosts of all types. On king cobras, they fasten onto the gaps between scales.

Humans are the king cobra’s most dangerous insurgents. Deforestation, often due to growing populations and agriculture, is shrinking the king’s native habitat throughout its range.

In southern India, people kill a dozen or more king cobras each year when the snakes stray into tea estates and villages.

The king’s natural realm stretches from India eastward to Vietnam, southern China, and the Philippines, and southeast through Malaysia and Indonesia. Yet throughout its vast range the king cobra is not common anywhere, and in India it has become rare from habitat loss.

Depending in part on its habitat, a king cobra’s color varies from olive-brown to gray to a deep, shiny black. In general, royals in dark forests have darker skins, and those in open forest or plains have lighter skins. How does a king cobra see? How does a creature hear with no ears? And how does a snake smell with its tongue? The king can’t see the royal purple—or any other color. Still, its eyesight is better than most snakes’. It’s good enough to see a moving person almost 330 feet (100 meters) away.

The snake focuses by moving the lens in and out, and can sleep with eyes open, seemingly alert.

With no external ears or eardrums, it’s understandable that until recently, experts maintained “Snakes are deaf.”

It turns out that king cobras do hear, however. Sounds travel from the skin to the jaw muscle to the quadrate bone next to the ear bone. From there they pass to the inner ear. Nevertheless, response to a snake charmer’s flute is due to visual cues.

Taste and smell merge for most snakes, thanks to the way their tongue and Jacobson’s organ work together.

By flicking its tongue, a snake brings odors in to ‘nostrils’ inside the mouth. These nostrils lead to the Jacobson’s organ, two cavities lined with sensitive nerve endings—the king can even smell water at a distance.

Wish you had one? Well you did. So did Ludwig Jacobson, the Danish anatomist for whom it’s named. Jacobson’s organ is found in human embryos, but it degenerates as the nervous system develops.