King Cobra

King cobras love to hide in caves and burrows, and also crawl onto trees. Some snakes prefer a certain territory, but some can travel tens of kilometers (which was established by tracking using implanted radio beacons).

King cobras can raise their heads vertically to one third of the front of their body, they are also able to move in this position. When one king cobra meets another, she tries to touch her crown to show her dominant position, and the snake, which she touched so, immediately bends and crawls ^[4] .

King cobras often live near humans. The reason is that in Asia, large-scale agricultural production has led to a significant reduction in the rainforests inhabited by king cobras; at the same time, crops attract rodents, rodents attract relatively small snakes, and they, in turn, make up the diet of the royal cobra.

King cobra regulates the consumption of poison during an attack, blocking the ducts of the toxic glands through muscle contractions. The amount of poison consumed depends on the size of the victim and is usually almost an order of magnitude higher than the lethal dose ^[5] . Most often, in an attempt to scare away a person, the snake makes “idle” bites, without injecting poison at all. Apparently, this is due to the fact that the cobra needs venom primarily for hunting, and accidental or unnecessary losses are undesirable.

King cobra venom has a mostly neurotoxic effect. The toxin of the poison blocks muscle contractions, which causes paralysis of the respiratory muscles, respiratory arrest and death. Its strength and volume (up to 7 ml) is enough to cause death of a person in 15 minutes after the first full bite ^[5] . In such cases, the probability of death may exceed 75%. But, taking into account all the features of the behavior of the royal cobra, in general, only 10% of bites become fatal to humans. In India, deaths from a bite of a royal cobra are rare, despite the fact that up to 50 thousand people die every year from bites of poisonous snakes in the country.

King cobra is a very patient snake . If a person is at close range with this snake, he should stand (or sit) at the level of her eyes, not make sudden movements, breathe evenly and calmly look at her. After a few minutes, the cobra will consider the person a harmless object and slip away.

In nature, the king cobra feeds mainly on other species of snakes, including highly poisonous ones, for which it received its scientific name - Ophiophagus hannah (“snake eater”). Often attacks snakes that are already hunting someone. Sometimes it kills and, having killed, swallows small monitor lizards ^[6] .

It can do without food for about three months - the time during which the female inseparably guards the laying of eggs.

King cobra sheds 4 to 6 times a year. Shedding lasts about 10 days. After molting, it becomes vulnerable and, in search of a secluded and warm place, can crawl into a person’s dwelling, thereby causing a lot of concern to its inhabitants.

By defending and making frightening lunges in the direction of the person who bothered her, the king cobra is able to make characteristic barking sounds using the not too great capabilities of its breathing apparatus. Among snakes, along with the king cobra, only Baird's rat snake is able to make sounds through breathing movements .

Faced in one territory, males can arrange ritual fights between themselves, while they do not bite each other. The winning male remains near the female. Moreover, if the female is already fertilized by another male, there are frequent cases when the winning male attacks the female and kills her, after which she eats. If the killed female fails to completely absorb because of her large size, he burps it.

Mating is preceded by a short courtship of the male, during which he makes sure that the female is not dangerous for him (the female can also attack the male and kill him). After this, mating takes place, which lasts about an hour.

After mating, the female will be ready to lay eggs in about a month. At this time, she builds a nest for eggs, which is completely unusual for other snakes. The nest is built on a small hill so that in case of flooding during tropical rains it does not flood. It is a pile of rotting forest litter about a meter across, in which the female lays from 20 to 40 eggs, and subsequently constantly maintains a temperature of 26 to 28 ℃, increasing or decreasing the pile. This ensures the optimal temperature regime for the development of eggs due to rotting vegetation.

Incubation is about 100 days.

Females always guard the clutch, becoming very aggressive and attacking everyone who approaches the nest - from small animals to elephants and humans. At this time, the toxicity of the poison of the female increases, and even an elephant can die as a result of her attack.

Shortly before the hatching of the cubs, the female leaves the nest and goes in search of food so as not to eat her own offspring.

After hatching, the cubs stay near the nest for about a day, eating the remaining yolk of eggs. The young are already very poisonous, but, nevertheless, very vulnerable and often become the target of larger predators. Ultimately, only 1 or 2 out of 25 survives to adulthood.

King cobras are rarely kept in zoos due to aggressiveness; moreover, rarely, when kept in captivity, king cobras are fed to rats . More rarely breeding.

• The Mysteries of the Royal Cobra
• Dangerous Encounters: Deadly Encounters

• The Reptile Database: Ophiophagus hannah