Video: Snake catchers: how the Irul tribe mastered a deadly trade
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
When snake tamers perform in the circus, the audience looks at them with bated breath. However, few people know that there is a tribe in India that specializes in catching spectacled cobras, the most dangerous snakes on the planet. These people call themselves irula, they learn from childhood hunting for reptiles, and they know everything about how to protect yourself from a snakebite and how to "milk" reptiles in order to collect valuable venom!
In the Irul tribe, everyone hunts - from young to old. From childhood, kids are taught to hunt non-venomous snakes, by the age of eight they are already allowed to catch more dangerous reptiles, and boys 12-13 years old accompany their parents who are looking for burrows of cobras. Each family member has his own functions: the man has the most responsible mission, he catches the snake, but his children and wife help him. Children dig the entrance to the snake hole, and the wife makes sure that the reptile does not escape through the "back door".
Previously, the Irula killed snakes because they traded in snake skin, but after the official ban they began to catch reptiles in order to get their valuable poison. Snakes do not suffer from such procedures: the Irula donate their prey to a special cooperative, where the snakes are placed in clay jugs and "milked" regularly every seven days. The poison is obtained from the fact that a snake is forced to bite a cloth stretched over a glass. The poison drains into a container. You can get several milligrams of a deadly substance at a time. It is later used to produce serum and pain relievers.
The snakes are kept in the cooperative for two or three weeks, and then they are released into the wild. In rare cases, reptiles are doomed to live in captivity until death. One Irul family can catch about 15 cobras per day, so the cooperative is very successful.
Interestingly, the Irula themselves do not trust the serum made by doctors. In cases of bites, they drink a special herbal decoction prepared according to an old recipe. In addition, they regularly give this broth to children so that they develop immunity from a young age. Irula is assured that the remedy really saves from the poison of snakes, because thanks to its use, more than a dozen local residents survived after a cobra bite.
Life and culture are no less interesting primitive waorani tribe, monkey hunters.
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