‘Teach your children well about snakes’ says Chris Cooke

Chris Cooke from HRC said most children are taught to kill snakes. “What we should teach our children, however, is that snakes can be dangerous and that people should not pick up snakes and most definitely not kill snakes because that is the most dangerous way you can encounter a snake. “If you try to catch and kill a snake it is going to fear for its own life and it’s likely to defend itself by biting. We can teach children about snakes at any age and it’s very important that we don’t scare children into leaving snakes alone because then we create an entire generation of people that are fearful and when people are fearful of animals they are likely to kill them,” he said.

He said it’s never too early to teach people about animals in their environment especially animals that are potentially dangerous to people. HRC offers various educational programmes which teaches children from local schools and day-care centres the basics about reptiles. When asked what people can do when they come across a snake, Cooke said they must freeze and standstill.

“You stop where you are and you don’t move a muscle, a snake’s vision is very tuned into movement and if you move around because you are frightened and panicked the snake may misinterpret your movement as a threat. So it may look like you are going to catch the snake or hurt it, so that’s why it’s important to stand absolutely still,” he said.

He told the Herald that by doing so, the snake has a chance to be calm. “What we recommend people to do is to take a deep breath, try to be calm and just allow the snake to move away and because snakes are scared of people, they will move away, you just have to give them an opportunity to do so,” he said.

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Cooke said in a case where the snake cannot move away because of being cornered somehow or there is something preventing it from moving away, the person should then look behind them first to avoid tripping and falling on something.

“And if everything is okay then you just back away slowly from the snake and once you are about three metres away then, if you want to, you can scream and shout or run away, ” he said.

When asked how people can differentiate between a venomous snake and one that is not Cooke said the hacks available on the internet for identification do not apply to any of the snakes found on the African continent.

“Some people say you look at the shape of the head, look if the snake has stripes or bands, all of that information is incorrect. You cannot tell the difference between a venomous snake and a nonvenomous snake simply by looking at it unless you know what the species looks like.

“So what I recommend people to do is to educate themselves on the dangerous snakes in the areas that they live in. In South Africa, we have around 16 species that are potentially dangerous to people and you won’t find all 16 species in one area in the country. “So it’s simple, learn which are the dangerous snakes or the potentially medically significant snakes in your area,” Cooke said.

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He said it is not entirely necessary to know exactly what these snakes look like because there are Facebook groups and WhatsApp communities which assist people in identifying snakes simply by sending a photo of the snake. He said Hoedspruit residents can forward their photos for identification to 064 516 7439.

He said should someone get bitten by a snake, they should stay away from pseudo-remedies and get to a hospital without wasting time. “There is a lot of these remedies which people think work for snake bites but they don’t.

“They should not try to suck the venom out or try and cut the bitten area or apply extreme temperatures like putting hot objects on the affected area, it is also not effective to put ice on the wound. “Don’t apply electricity to the wound and in general, don’t tie off the circulation with a tourniquet,” he said.

Cooke said a lot of people use these pseudo-remedies and end up making the bite even more difficult to treat. “It is very important for people in our area not to visit a sangoma for treatment for a snakebite, sangomas cannot treat snakebites and that’s a fact. What people need to realise is that many sangoma remedies for snakebites are pseudo-remedies and they don’t actually work, but they give you an illusion that they work or sangomas have the reputation that they work. You have to go to a proper hospital where you will receive a snakebite anti-venom, the only thing known to science that actually helps for snakebites and the doctors at the hospital can decide whether your bite is severe enough to warrant the use of anti-venom.”

He said people should never catch or kill a snake for identification when they are bitten, they should rather take a picture and send it to a snake expert.