Amazing stuff! Hitch a ride!
"Some king cobras, the longest venomous snakes in the world, may be traveling on trains in India. The inadvertent hitchhiking appears to be transporting these deadly snakes into places they don’t normally occur, raising the risk of harm to people and the snakes as well. ...
The new study of dispersal via railway travel—the first such analysis for snakes—was undertaken ... in the state of Goa, where the Western Ghats king cobra lives primarily in forests. Parmar compiled reports on cobra rescues spanning 22 years, which revealed that these serpents had been found in five locations with entirely unsuitable lowland habitat; all were along or within a few hundred meters of railway tracks. Parmar and colleagues suspect the snakes, which are agile climbers, slip onto freight trains when they stop in the cobra’s prime habitat, perhaps on the hunt for rodents, lizards, or other snakes attracted to the train’s edible cargo. ..."
From the abstract:
"We provide the first detailed documentation on the distribution and natural history of the Western Ghats King Cobra, Ophiophagus kaalinga, in Goa State, India, and its interesting apparent interaction with railway infrastructure, which may influence its distribution.
The combination of rescue records, verified sightings, local reports, and historical data allowed us to document a total of 47 georeferenced localities where O. kaalinga has been found in the state, with 18 localities in North Goa District and 29 in South Goa District. These data inform our study of the Goa Gap, a biologically significant region without obvious physical characteristics, and assess the suitability of this area for king cobras.
Using a series of climate and vegetation variables, we were able to model the potential distribution of the species in Goa. It is noteworthy that the five king cobra records that fall along busy railway corridors had the lowest predicted probability, as predicted by our model. Combined with recent reports of snakes on trains in India and of O. kaalinga in a rail yard, entirely unsuitable reptile habitats, we propose the hypothesis that snakes, king cobras included, may inadvertently expand their ranges by accidental transport on trains."
Fig. 1 Predicted distribution of the Western Ghats King Cobra, Ophiophagus kaalinga, in Goa State, India.
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