Snake Charmers in India

[Fuscus]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=540419

 

[kevyn]

Great article Fuscus! Thanks for sharing that. I was all geared up to be pi$$ed off again, but I think it's very promising news. I put snake charmers and venomoid keepers in the same catagory. What I would like to know however is how does a person go about "training" a snake?

 

[Browndog]

They sound as bad as those pesky buggers at traffic lights that clean your windscreen then wait to be paid.

Good riddence to them.


Browndog

 

[Dicco]

I saw a doco a while back where this woman was cracking down on the snake charmers, turns out most only survive a very short time after capture from cruelty and lack of apropriate husbandry. She had consficated a fair few by the end of the show when she released them.

 

[soulweaver]

i reckon with a lot of time, and if you developed tactics you could train a snake. most animals can be so why not a snake? just give it food treats all the time when its good

 

[Tommo]

that would be slow training if you give it food when it does the right thing

its just a cobras natural reaction when it sees something moving to hood up and watch it

 

[peterescue]

I saw a great little doco on SBS about the true snake charmers. These people are all of one tribal group. They remove snakes and sell snake bite cures as well as do snake charming(unfortunately all based on religious hooey and superstition). They start life being given snakes to play with and so build up an immunity to venom. In this doco a guy is hand feeding his snakes on pieces of chicken including a cobra. No tongs. These people didnt indulge in the practices mentioned. While the story is probably mostly true it is also a story based on the propaganda published by certain animal welfare organisations with an agenda to push. Remember that when they try to ban you from keeping snakes.
Peter

 

[Alexahnder]

Some interesting points......................

Animal rights campaigners have long charged that snake-charming is cruel. They accuse the snake-charmers of training the snakes to perform through physical abuse.

Its pretty easy to rain a cobra to follow a pipe....In fact it needs no training. So how can animal right organisations say this.

In order to protect themselves, the snake-charmers have to remove the threat of the snakes' venom, and the activists claim they do this by ripping out the snake's fangs, instead of regularly draining out the venom.

You cannot remove the venom from a snake by milking it regulary. Snake venom is like saliva...it replaces its self constantly. Again this shows that these animal rights organisations do not know what they are saying.

Alexahnder