Adonis Diaries

King cobra may kill female if rebuffed? (Nov. 9, 2009)

I watched National Geographic channel at 10:30 pm on Sunday.  I see a couple of cobras copulating.  The story is that the female was mating with a king cobra and a local male challenged the mating cobra.  The two males engaged in a harmless fight: they are immune to their poisons and just entwine for some time; I see their heads dancing close to one another.  The previous mating cobra gives up the fight and sneaks out of the picture. The female was sneaking away because she was either already satisfied or she felt that she had aversion to the intruding challenging vanquisher.

The winning cobra appeared wanting to mate for a few seconds but the female kept sneaking away. Suddenly, the king cobra changed his mind and decided to kill the female; did he smell his rival’s copulation or was he going crazy for the rebuff? The male cobra killed a female cobra after 45 minutes of an agonizing struggle. Before dying the female spins fast clockwise and counter-clockwise for a last attempt to survival. It seems that the female has less immunity than male to the poison and the male is at least a head longer than female. The male then undertook to swallow “whole” the female. The female snake turned out to be too big and he regurgitated her dead body.

What with this game of male challenges?  Couldn’t the mating king cobra resume his job by forgetting the intruder’s presence?  Anyway, I don’t think that the intruder would have challenged the mating king cobra; at least the mating one has this psychological superiority of being more capable of surviving and finding a female partner.  Why would a tired mating cobra endeavor to take chances and then run the possibility of hard scouring process of finding an agreeable and consenting female?

It seems that female cobra build a nest for around 25 eggs to hatch; she pile up a meter-high of tree leaves so that the eggs enjoy a climate of 25 degrees and then hatch after 3 months; the female fast for 3 months because she would not leave the nest.  Immediately after the first egg hatches then the female is out of her obligations; actually, she leaves quickly in order not to start eating her progeny.

The newly hatched cobras are already venomous and can hunt for survival; usually, only 2 out of 25 live to adulthood.  Cobras are attracted to areas where rat snakes abound; thus, rat snakes are attracted to areas where rats come to eat and then cobras follow rat snakes to feed on!

I got in bed by 12:15 am and was terrified by the program on natures.  Luckily, I don’t recall having nightmarish dreams.  What do I know? May be the bad dreams will strike me tonight; then I might sue National Geographic for late horror emissions.