Forest officer asks Twitter to guess snake species, post goes viral

Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Praveen Kaswan Agar is known for sharing pictures of animals in their natural habitat. He keeps his followers engaged by regularly interacting with his followers and posting interesting facts about wildlife. On Tuesday, he took to his Twitter handle to share an image of a giant snake with green bushes in a wasteland and asked his followers to guess the species of the reptile. He later revealed the species name but by then the guessing game was on.

“This beauty. Let’s see who can guess the species,” Mr. Kaswan said in his tweet.

This beauty. Let’s see who can guess the species. pic.twitter.com/20kxumGghD

— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) 1 November 2022

Most Twitter users and their followers guessed the name King Cobra correctly.

One user tweeted, “Of course it’s a king cobra.. very easy to guess.” “Great Indian cobra,” said another. However, others got confused with the krait because of the black stripes on the snake’s body.

The IFS officer himself today disclosed the answer saying that the photo is actually of a king cobra. He posted a picture of a king cobra eating another snake.

The facts disclosed by the IFS officer included the diet of the giant snake. He also said that the snake’s scientific name Ophiophagus Hannah is derived from Greek.

“King Cobra; Ophiophagus hannah.” “Ophiophagus” is derived from Greek, meaning “snake eater” and Hannah is derived from the name of tree-dwelling nymphs in Greek mythology. Snake whose 100% diet is other large snakes. Here is my old click, Raja eating a spectacled cobra,” he tweeted while threading the tweet.

In another tweet, he said that these snakes are highly venomous. “There are only snakes in the world that build nests. They don’t like human presence so avoid us.”

Mr. Kaswan said that development has made these snakes somewhat resistant to the venomous venom of other snakes.

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