Across the globe a team of researchers is working on understanding people’s perception of snakes in an effort to reduce the 5.4-million snakebites that happen every year.
The tool the researchers are using is a questionnaire that forms part of a study called “Under the Snakefluence” that involves 20 countries, including South Africa, and has the aim of getting a better understanding of human/snake interactions. Through this understanding they can then work out the best approaches to educate people about snakes and promote better ways in which humans and snakes can get along.
“There have been studies about human perceptions of snakes before, but they have all been on a smaller scale,” says Owen Bachhuber, a student researcher at California Polytechnic State University’s physiological ecology of reptiles laboratory, who is co-managing the project.
It comes at a time when snakes and humans increasingly encroach on each other’s territory and as climate change affects the reptiles’ distribution ranges. This interaction is what the World Health Organisation estimates results in millions of people being bitten each year. About 138,000 people die every year, and 400,000 are left with a permanent disability. Most of those bitten are in India.
Countries participating in the project include the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Uganda, Malawi, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Peru, the Philippines and South Africa.
The problem in South Africa, says Nick van der Walt, who is involved in the study, is that no-one knows how many people are bitten by snakes locally. The data isn’t collected from the various facilities that treat snakebites, the snake training instructor says. What is known is that there are just a handful of snakes responsible for those attacks.
“The biggest biters are Cape cobras, puff adders, Mozambique spitting cobras, stiletto snakes and night adders,” says Van der Walt.
Cape cobras, he says, account for the most attacks because they are less afraid of humans and have a habit of coming into homes; they’re even known to slither into beds, seeking out heat. “A sleeping child then rolls over them and gets bitten,” says Van der Walt.
The biggest biters are Cape cobras, puff adders, Mozambique spitting cobras, stiletto snakes and night adders
— Nick van der Walt
Other local highly venomous snakes, like green and black mambas, are likely to stay away from humans.
What research has shown, Bachhuber says, is that snakebites most often occur while people are trying to kill snakes. The questions asked in the survey not only deal with a person’s feelings about snakes, but also their religion and what they think of wildlife in general.
“Snakes are complex. There are many types around the world, and the ways that they interact with people are highly variable,” says Bachhuber.
South Africans, Van der Walt has found, are often very scared of snakes and much of it concerns cultural and religious beliefs. But, he says, in his training he has found that they can lose this fear very quickly.
“They come to class very scared of snakes, they don’t want to be there,” he says. “By the end of the day, we’ve broken the fear, they are touching snakes and taking photographs.”
So far, the researchers have gathered more than 1,700 responses from their surveys and hope to complete their data collection by July. They plan to publish their findings in 2026.
Ultimately Bachhuber hopes their work would help to prevent snakebites. “Snakebites are such a big issue globally and there’s a lack of funding to treat them,” he says. “Snake education is great prevention for that. If you know how to avoid getting bitten by a snake, or what to do if you’re bitten, you are less likely to die.”
