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A disturbing video shows a cobra as it wraps itself around a child’s neck in India. The video has gone viral. You can watch it below.
NDTV reported that the girl was 6-years-old and lives in Maharashtra’s Wardha district in India. She survived the attack, even though the massive snake was wrapped around her neck for “close to two hours,” the station reported.
Here’s what you need to know:
The Child Remained Motionless for Two Hours Until a Snake Catcher Could Come, Reports Say
According to NDTV, the girl was “bitten” by the snake during the attack but is expected to recover. The video went viral on social media.
The station identified the girl as Purva Gadkari and said that the snake wrapped itself around the child’s neck as “she lay frightened on her side on a bed in her home.” The family asked her not to move and called a snake catcher, the site reported.
She stayed silent for two hours, the site says.
Lokmat, a YouTube page with 1.6 million followers, shared the video and gave the girl’s age as a year older. “In the village of Borkhedi in Wardha’s Selu taluka, a tragic incident took place … A snake sat on the body of a sleeping seven-year-old girl for two hours,” the site wrote with the video.
Cobra Bites Can Be Very Dangerous, Even Deadly
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The little girl is lucky because Cobra bites can be dangerous.
According to Britannica, Cobras are “any of various species of highly venomous snakes, most of which expand the neck ribs to form a hood. While the hood is characteristic of cobras, not all of them are closely related.”
The site says that Cobras “are found from southern Africa through southern Asia to islands of Southeast Asia. Throughout their range, different species are favourites of snake charmers, who frighten them into assuming the upreared defense posture.”
The site adds:
The snake sways in response to the movement and perhaps also to the music of the charmer, who knows how to avoid the relatively slow strike and who may have removed the snake’s fangs. The short fangs at the front of the mouth have an enclosed groove, which delivers the venom. Cobra venom generally contains neurotoxins active against the nervous system of prey—primarily small vertebrates and other snakes. Bites, particularly from larger species, can be fatal depending on the amount of venom injected. Neurotoxins affect breathing, and although antivenin is effective, it must be administered soon after the bite. Thousands of deaths occur each year in South and Southeast Asia.
According to IBTimes, there was a similar incident recently involving a Cobra that bit a mother and two kids who were lying on the floor. That incident also happened in the Indian state of Maharastra, according to IBTimes, and the two children died as a result of the snake bite. The mother, although badly injured, survived the attack.
In another viral snake video recently, a python was photographed with an exploded stomach in Thailand after it tried to ingest a cow.
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