A king cobra bite -- and a scientific discovery | Gowri Shankar

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2021

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

A king cobra has enough venom to kill 10 people in a single bite. Recounting his near-death experience after being bitten by one of these majestic yet deadly snakes, conservationist and TED Fellow Gowri Shankar shares the epiphany he had when the antivenom failed: there's more than one unique species of king cobra.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Pierce Brosnan here. Guest hosting today on TED Talks Daily. Here's a talk from the TED Fellows community
0:12.2	given by King Cobra conservationist Gauray Shankar Pugiri on new science findings that help us preserve India's wild spaces by saving the
0:25.0	king cobra.
0:32.8	That's the beautiful growl of the world's longest venomous snake, the king cobra.
0:38.6	They are the only snakes that build the nest to incubate their eggs.
0:43.2	App to their scientific name, Ophiphig is Hannah, meaning a snake eater.
0:48.5	They eat other snakes, including their own kind.
0:52.1	Growing up to five meters, they possess enough venom to kill 10 people
0:55.9	in a single bite or even an elephant. King Cobras might be intimidating to most people,
1:02.3	but I was always fascinated by them. I've been studying this legendary species for the last 20 years.
1:09.7	Fifteen years ago, I was bitten by a king cobra while rescuing it from a house, which otherwise
1:15.5	would have been killed.
1:16.9	There is no anti-venom for Indian king cobra.
1:19.7	So I was certain I would die in about 30 minutes.
1:23.0	The bite was in my hand.
1:24.6	The pain was moving up my arm towards the heart.
1:29.9	The pain was so excruciating that I actually begged the team to just let me die rather than stay in agony. I remembered I
1:37.3	had stalked a few vials of antivenom from Thailand, meant for Thailand King Cobra, which I
1:43.9	decided to experiment with it on myself.
1:47.3	But the Thai anti-venom failed, and we had to stop the treatment.
1:53.1	But here I am. A ghost? No. The king was kind. He'd injected a very small quantity of venom
2:00.3	into my hand, which wasn't enough to kill me.
	...

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