Forest Officer Asks Twitter To Guess Snake Species, Post Goes Viral

The huge snake has been photographed sitting with its hood open.

Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Praveen Kaswan if known for sharing spending photos of animals in their natural habitat. He also keeps his followers engaged by regularly interacting with his followers and posting interesting facts about wildlife. On Tuesday, he shared the image of a huge snake in barren land with green shrubs in the background on his Twitter handle and asked his followers to guess the species of the reptile. He later revealed the name of the species but the guessing game was on till then.

“This beauty. Let’s see who can guess the species,” Mr Kaswan said in his tweet.

This beauty. Let’s see who can guess the species. pic.twitter.com/20kxumGghD

— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) November 1, 2022

Most of the Twitter users and his followers guessed the name correctly as king cobra.

“Of course it’s a King Cobra.. very easy to guess,” one user tweeted. “The great Indian Cobra,” said another. Others were, however, got confused with krait due to the black stripes on the snake’s body.

The IFS officer himself revealed the answer today, saying the photo indeed is that of a king cobra. He posted a photo of a king cobra eating another snake.

The facts mentioned by the IFS officer included the diet of the huge snake. He also said that the snake’s scientific name Ophiophagus Hannah is derived from Greek.

“King Cobra; Ophiophagus hannah. “Ophiophagus” is derived from Greek, meaning “snake-eating” and hannah is derived from the name of tree-dwelling nymphs in Greek mythology. The snake whose 100% diet is other big snakes. Here old click of mine, king eating a spectacled cobra,” he tweeted while threading the tweet.

In another tweet, he said that these snakes are massive with huge amount of venom. “Only snakes in world which build nests. They don’t like human presence so avoid us.”

Mr Kaswan said evolution has made these snakes somewhat resistant to toxic venom of other snakes.

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