The king cobra is the world’s most dangerous snake, and the female is the mother from Hell.

   There are snake species that have much more potent venom, like Australia’s tiger snake, and species that are far more fearsome, like Africa’s Gabon viper, which has the world’s longest snake fangs—6.4 cm. (long enough to plunge right through your hand). And there definitely are species that are far more aggressive, like Africa’s black mamba, which is called “Death Incarnate.” But the king cobra is, without question, and by far, the world’s most dangerous snake, for these two reasons: its size; and its intelligence.

   It is, again by far, the world’s biggest venomous snake. At up to 6.7 m. long, its body is half the diameter of a rugby football. Its favorite food is other snakes (its genus: Ophiophagus, “snake-eater”), and it’s big enough to eat adult pythons.

   When it rears vertically, any cobra raises the front third of its body. When that body is even 6.7 m. long, the king cobra’s head is looking down at you. Usually when a person is bitten by any snake, it’s on the ankle or lower leg. The king bites you on your face or neck. No way to tie a tourniquet. Jungle expert Gordon Young told me, “Here’s the treatment if a king cobra bites you: lay down, so you’ll be comfortable when you die.”

   Again the creature’s size is bad news, because its venom sacs are huge. One bite from its 1.27-cm.-long fangs can inject 600 mg. of venom. In comparison, a sidewinder rattlesnake’s bite injects 18 mg. Even though king cobra venom is not especially potent, the sheer quantity delivered in a single bite is enough to kill 40 men or 1 elephant.

   But the thing that makes the king cobra so truly dangerous is the fact that it is the one and only species of snake on Earth with real intelligence. All other snakes act mechanically—this happens, they do that, that happens, they do this, everything they do being always predictable. But how a king cobra acts in any situation depends entirely on the mood the snake happens to be in.

   On good days, when you encounter one in the jungle, it will rear up and just look at you. You clearly aren’t food, since you’re not a snake, and it just stares at you like you’re a two-headed calf or something—on good days. But on the serpent equivalent of a bad-hair day, it might just kill you, or it might play cat-and-mouse with you for a while before it kills you.

   You’re trekking in the jungle and a king rears up in front of you. You whirl around and run. The snake confirms what direction you’re headed in, plots where you’re going to be in ten minutes, gets there ahead of you, and when you come panting up, it rears. You tear off in a different direction, and after half an hour you’re sure you’re safe, and then whoosh, there she is right in front of you again.

   Yet another demonstration of its intelligence can even be called evidence of a rudimentary culture: it is the one and only snake in the world that is territorial, and the one and only snake on Earth that literally builds a dwelling.

   The king cobra defines borders for itself, and any animals that cross those meandering invisible lines, even elephants or tigers, are chased out, or killed. Mr. Siah told Jonathan Leakey and C.J.P. Ionides (see my Blog No. 1 on Fascinating People) to look for any circular or oval bamboo thicket surrounded by deciduous trees. Such a thicket would likely be a king cobra’s “castle” (his word), and the border would be about 20 m. in every direction from it. Once they stepped across the border, he cautioned them, they would have about 10 seconds to prepare for the snake’s attack. It would rush out to repel them, grunting fast, explosive hisses, and when it reared to strike they would have at most 2 seconds to loop a noose at the end of a pole over its head and around its neck. On their expedition, the two Kenyans did that, flawlessly, 16 times. Then they raided the “keep” of each castle, gathering those 484 eggs.

   In the heart of its thicket, when she’s ready to lay her eggs, the female does two things that once again are absolutely unique among the world’s 2,900 species of snake: she constructs a nest; and she displays maternal instinct.

   But this is maternal instinct from Hell.

   She uses her coils to scrape bamboo leaf litter into a big mound, sometimes nearly 2 m. high. Then she makes the mound two stories, burrowing into the center and pushing here and there until she’s hollowed out two chambers, one above the other. In the lower chamber, she then lays up to 45 eggs. That would be a great many king cobras if they all survived to adulthood. But the mother herself is the reason that only one or two of her babies ever survive.

   She settles herself in the upper chamber and waits. The species is “programmed” to emerge from the egg fast and wiggle straight down into the mulch, to escape Mommy Dearest, who goes into a feeding frenzy as her babies start emerging from their eggs.

   Which is why king cobras are relatively rare, and why the species, though the world’s most dangerous, is virtually harmless. Each year, only around 50 people die from king cobra bites. The world’s deadliest snake, common in India and throughout Central Asia, is the foot-long saw-scaled viper, which by itself kills 15,000 people every year.

Snake Trivia: Of all the world’s species of snake, not a single one is “poisonous.” Poisons are inert chemicals or compounds, like cyanide. Venoms have DNA (they’re loaded with proteins and other organic components). Here’s the prevalence: in the world, 2,900 species of snake; 459 of them venomous (15%).