Snake

Snake

Sri Lanka is home to a number of interesting species of snakes, and while this may bode well for reptile lovers and wildlife enthusiasts, there are others who – quite understandably – aren’t overly excited about it.

We suspect this may have something to do with the fact that some of these snakes are highly venomous, which means they have the potential to kill you, should you get bitten by one of them.

At the same time, widespread fear among Sri Lankans has also meant bad news for the snakes – because snake encounters, more often than not, result firstly in panic, and secondly in an attempt to get rid of the snake by any means possible, even if it means killing the creature (and sadly, this happens a lot).

In case you were thinking that this article sounds like it’s just about to tell you NOT to kill snakes no matter how scary they may seem, then you’re right, that’s precisely what we we’re about to say.

And why not kill them? As reptile expert Dinal Samarasinghe points out, killing a snake is a course of action that must be taken only as a last resort, because ‒ although this may be hard to believe sometimes ‒ the animal is always, always, more afraid of you than you are of it.

To add to this, with the exception of five species of venomous snakes on land, all other snakes in Sri Lanka are in fact legally protected under Section 31 of the Flora and Fauna Protection Ordinance (FFPO). This essentially makes it illegal to kill snakes, or even transport, dead or alive, a snake or any part of the snake, or even its eggs.