India's snakeman tells 'hiss story'

When his friends were playing with cats and dogs, the young Romulus Whitaker was overturning rocks to find snakes. When he grew up, the American-born became India’s most famous herpetologist and set up a snake park. He looks back on his daring adventures

I had an unusual mother and she unwittingly set me off on an unconventional path. Circa 1940s, Hoosick village, New York State. I was four when I burst into our home, holding a beaten-up snake on a stick. Doris Norden, my mother, came closer and remarked, “A garter snake”. She complained: “It’s harmless. It would not have hurt you.” Not me, the village boys, I clarified. We were turning over rocks to find earthworms for fish bait when we spotted the snake. It’s poisonous, the boys cried and pummelled it with stones. “Promise me you won’t kill a snake,” she said. Soon, she repurposed an aquarium as a terrarium for me to keep snakes to observe them.

I am 81 today. One attitude that hasn’t changed much in the six decades that I have been a snake and crocodile specialist, naturalist, rainforest conservationist, and filmmaker, is that of adults reinforcing their unfounded fears in children. Most parents in my mother’s place would have given me an earful. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but such shoutings can leave a deep impression on kids. It may shut down their curiosity about the natural world.

But, thanks to my mother, here I was catching patterned milksnakes, ring-necked snakes and ribbon snakes in jelly jars with a wire coat hanger bent and attached to a stick. I was trying handling techniques, grabbing grasshoppers and frogs to feed my ‘pets’, and one-upping the local boys who warned me I’d die of a snakebite. I was now the weird, cool kid. Raymond L Ditmars’s book ‘Snakes of the World’ expanded my horizons about these creatures, who I thought were from outer space because everybody detested them or was scared of them. But to me, they were gorgeous and totally misunderstood.

The capture of Jaws at the Madras Crocodile Bank. It was India’s largest crocodile in captivity until it died in 2020.

Lesson 101: Snakes are extremely shy of humans. If they bite you, most likely you would have done something stupid. Count me in. When the first time a venomous snake, a cottonmouth water moccasin, sank its fangs into my right thumb, it hurt bad. But I dismissed my clumsiness as a rite of passage. Now I was a professional snake hunter, one of the boys, no more the understudy, I write in the first volume of my autobiography ‘Snakes, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll’ (HarperCollins India), which I have co-written with my wife Janaki Lenin. A few moccasin victims have lost their hands and feet because of gangrene but I got away with a throbbing pain in my swollen arm. Not the last time a snake struck me like lightning. Call it a work hazard.

India connection

My mother wasn’t spooked by my snake fixation because it turns out her sister Violet used to carry snakes in her pocket. However, she hadn’t imagined that after my stint as a salesman, a seaman, a carpenter’s assistant and a lab technician in the US Army, I would choose a career in reptile research and conservation. Also, because I had blood on my hands. I had skinned birds for a museum, shot blackbucks for dinner, and caught rattlers and toads for trade and research. I am not proud of my hunting days, but it fostered my love of the forest and did teach me a lot about wildlife behaviour and habitats.

I wanted to do in India what my guru Bill Haast, the most snake-bitten man, was doing in Miami. At his Miami Serpentarium, paying visitors could see exotic snakes, lizards, crocodiles and tortoises in captivity. And also how he extracted venom from snakes for medical research and for antivenom to treat snakebite victims. I apprenticed with him for two years after flunking out of college. His sleight-of-hand manoeuvre while handling king cobras fuelled my interest in the longest venomous snake further. I caught 500 dollars worth of rattlesnakes, and with that income, I sailed back to India, a country my mother and stepfather Rama Chattopadhyaya had made my home as an eight-year-old. I now live on a farm near Mysuru.

Taxidermy in Mysore

I grew up in 1950s Bombay, studied in the Palani Hills, and learnt taxidermy in Mysore. I hung out with snake charmers, kept a python for a pet, caught my first venomous snake, Russell’s viper, in a pillowcase, and became the neighbourhood snake rescuer ‘saampwala’. I went to the US in 1961 for college. After my return in 1967, I would earn the moniker of ‘The original snakeman of India’. I suppose because nobody else was shouting how wonderful snakes are — a decline in snakes can lead to more rodents and pests, more crop destruction, more diseases.

Whitaker with a milksnake in 1940s New York State.

First snake park

We opened India’s first snake park in Madras and saw 10 lakh visitors in the first year. For publicity, I would ride around the city on my Jawa motorcycle, wearing a three-foot-long sand boa in my mop of hair. And when we managed to breed two crocodiles at the park came the idea of Madras Crocodile Bank, which I started with my intrepid ex-wife Zai Whitaker (niece of ornithologist Salim Ali). When the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, rendered the snake-catching Irula tribe jobless, we roped them in to extract snake venom to make antivenom. The Irula Snake Catchers’ Industrial Cooperative Society now has over 350 members, including two Padma Shri recipients. They supply the snake venom to produce millions of vials of life-saving antivenom at large pharma companies. This started in 1982.

I learnt everything hands-on, from my Irula colleagues, and my peers around the world who would invite me over for herp adventures or share their field notes over snail mail or trunk calls. Well into my 40s, I did get a BSc in wildlife management by a correspondence course.

SOS from Raj Bhavan

No two rescues are similar. I got a frantic call from a village near Thane. A cobra was holed up inside a tree next to the caller’s house. While I pulled the snake out with one hand partially, a monitor lizard emerged too. I broke into a sweat. I pinned the lizard down with my knee amid cheers and claps. This was in my 20s. Recently, I came face to face with a spitting cobra dangling from a tree in Borneo. It was looking straight into my eyes, so I quickly put on my sunglasses. The expected happened. It squirted the venom. It dripped down my cheeks, into my mouth. It tasted a bit like lemon juice. At least my eyes were safe. In a recent case from Agumbe in Shivamogga district, a family could not use their washroom for two days because a king cobra had taken up residence in the rafters. They worship king cobras, so did not want to disturb it. I climbed a makeshift ladder and guided the snake to the floor. She was about to shed her skin.

Not everybody is as patient as this family. One day, an 8 ft mugger crocodile went missing from the Snake Park. It had climbed its way out of its enclosure and into a duck pond in the adjacent acreage, Raj Bhavan, the governor’s mansion. The governor’s office wanted it shot. We enlisted the help of the fisheries department and got the croc out with their trawling net, a week later.

Crocodile tales

Not every day in our life is out of a ‘National Geographic’ expedition. Though I’ve had my share, including working for two years on our film ‘King Cobra’ that won an Emmy Award in 1998. Some days, we are sipping endless cups of tea at government offices. Working with bureaucracy can be a test of patience but I learnt quickly.

Building a rapport with the Section Officer is key. That determines when your file will move forward or if it ever will. Hearing an American ask ‘Enna pandra?’ (What are you doing?) casts an impression like no other. Second, if an official is even remotely interested in your idea, latch on to him or her. One forest official named K A Bhoja Shetty helped us obtain land in the Guindy Deer Park in Madras, on a lease of Rs 250 per year, thus, relocating our snake park from the suburbs to the city. So much can be done with a good government officer, so little with a dud. We also got lucky with the then prime minister Indira Gandhi who was so pro-wildlife. Under her, Project Crocodile was rolled out and the gharial, one of the three Indian crocodile species, was saved from extinction.

As top predators, crocodiles regulate the population of fish. They are sensitive to changes in water quality and temperature, so their health and presence indicates the health of their ecosystem.

He is seen with his friends from Irula tribe.

Most crocodiles avoid humans. They find us tall and imposing. They may attack when stressed or if they are startled, and sometimes, bigger crocodiles become maneaters. Common sense can save you. I am reminded of my son Nikhil. He was in his teens. He was feeding a fish to a big crocodile at the Croc Bank when it grabbed his hand. My son kept his calm. Instead of yanking his arm out, he walked gently as the 500-kg reptile backed down to the pond. Luckily a staff member tapped a stick on the croc’s nose. Thinking it had more food, it opened its mouth and Nikhil pulled his hand out. I feel the crocodile mistook Nikhil’s hand for a fish and didn’t mean to hurt him.

Can humans co-exist with such ‘ferocious beasts’? For the Charotar region of Gujarat, that is its claim to global fame. The mugger crocodile lives in the village ponds. Villagers use the same ponds to do their laundry, wash their cattle, and bathe themselves. They have even built an island for crocodiles to bask in the sun.

Other roles

Surveys are a big part of our work. In the early 1970s, as I went around the country, I was shocked to learn that Indian crocodiles were on the brink of extinction. First, they suffered hunting at the hands of the British, then skin trading, then killing for meat, then theft of eggs. Now river pollution and dam construction were shrinking their habitat. I sensed the same negativity against crocodiles as I had seen about snakes and dove in to protect them.

We started breeding them at the Croc Bank and realised they were rabbits in disguise! In no time, we had a whole lot of them — the big male stud Periyar, the one-eyed Karappukunn, the loner Jaws who responded to our commands, and
Shanti and Vijaya named after our friends. We supplied the offspring to forest departments across the country and restocked their habitats.

The results from the Million Deaths Study that I co-authored came as a shocker too. Where the hospital records showed that 1,500 people in India were dying of snakebites every year, our door-to-door survey found that number to be over 50,000. Over 12 lakh snakebite deaths occurred between 2000 and 2019 and the Big Four aka spectacled cobra, Russell’s viper, saw-scaled viper and the common krait had probably caused 90% of these deaths. A majority of bites happen in and around farms because where rats go, snakes follow. Reducing snakebites is a cause close to my heart because if we can’t achieve that, snake killing will continue. So make note: wear rubber boots while working in fields, use flashlights at night, and sleep inside tucked mosquito nets.

Antivenom is the only effective treatment against serious snakebites. If bitten, stay still and calm to keep the venom from spreading and get to the hospital without delay. Don’t be lured by herbs or mantras, none works! Most snakebites are not fatal, certainly not instantly. Untreated, they can leave you with paralysed limbs, bleeding disorders, and trauma.

Nagin mythology

Myth busting is also a critical part of our outreach — snakes avenging their mates’ killing is the filmiest of it all. However, I think Indian mythologies and religious beliefs have done well to drive the message of human co-existence with reptiles. Every year, some farming and fishing communities in Goa shape a mugger out of mud from the floodplains and worship it. They consider the mugger to be their guardian. The ritual is called Mannge Thappni. In villages in Bardhaman district in West Bengal, I saw venomous cobras slither in and out of people’s houses, past children lost in their games. Nobody batted an eyelid and the snakes never spread their hoods.

Road to Agumbe

Cobras in particular are revered all across India, most astoundingly in Agumbe, the sleepy town of ‘Malgudi Days’ fame. I first arrived there on a bus in 1971 in search of a king cobra to display at the Madras Snake Park. Over the next three days, I caught two and paid a local tailor to sew
me two oversized ‘snake bags’ — the Wildlife Protection Act was still a year away.

Perched in the Western Ghats, Agumbe is possibly home to the most number of king cobras in south India. Three decades later, we would set up the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS) to study king cobras and their habitat, the rainforests. The idea was daunting but much needed. Agumbe is the second wettest place in India and in one year it received 11,000 mm of rain. The downpour was a hindrance for researchers to access the rainforests and uncover the mystery that unfolds every monsoon. Now there was a comfortable research station to come home to every evening. On every walk in the forest I saw new kinds of fungi, plants, frogs, birds, lizards and snakes. The leech attacks were no bother.

In 2008, ARRS started conducting the world’s first radio telemetry study on king cobras. A king cobra that only eats pit vipers was among the many secrets we unravelled. Technology is amazing. In the early research days, we used to encase a long thermometer in a PVC pipe and lower it into a crocodile pond and take the mercury reading before it dropped. Now, HOBO, a waterproof device, records temperature and humidity automatically and relays it to our smartphone.

Many dilemmas

The world may see us, conservationists, as heroes but are we? The crocodiles we released in the Neyyar dam in Kerala have grown manifold and now pose a potential danger to locals. The problem is that people have forgotten to co-exist with them for generations. The forest department needs to do more to educate them about living with crocodiles. There are no easy solutions to human-wildlife conflict.

Also, what is happening in India is wildlife preservation, not conservation. I espoused the sustainable use of wildlife to create economic opportunities back in the ’70s and do it even now. In New Guinea where I worked for three years, tribal communities raise crocodiles till a harvestable size, kill them for meat and send the skin for export. They care for the croc population because their livelihood depends on them. This is conservation in its most dynamic, sustainable mode.

I may have gotten sucked into research and policy consulting but the little boy in me is still keen on turning over rocks and roving the world’s wild places to see new serpents. There are over 3,000 of them and I have only seen hundreds. An Iranian snake whose tail looks like a spider, and a black mamba from Africa, second in size only to king cobras, are at the top of my bucket list.

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