What were they thinking?!

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Originally Posted by Jeanne

naja sputatrix aka southern Indonesian spitting cobra.

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I knew I had that wrong ... anyone know SN for the black spitting cobra?

-adam

Here is what I found for African Cobras:

http://www.cobras.org/cob_14.htm

Scroll down.

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Originally Posted by daniel1983

I am always searching for info on the natural life of ball pythons. Where did you read about that? I know you have all these excellent research article on bps ;)

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Not sure if I read it or heard it ... I have a couple of friends that have been over there collecting and always come back with a wealth of info from the trappers.

But I do have a stack of articles from american and european publications that have a ton of great info as well. If I come across something I'll post the reference.

-adam

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Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki

I knew I had that wrong ... anyone know SN for the black spitting cobra?

-adam

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Naja nigricollis nigricincta
and'
Naja nigricollis woodi

Sorry... not the first one, but this one:

Naja mossambica-Mossambique spitting cobras (formerly subspecies of Naja nigricollis)

First one is a banded spitting cobra

Oh yeah-
Naja katiensis-Formerly subspecies of Naja nigricollis, then of Naja mossambica)

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Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki

The "balling" is an evolutionary development to prevent the cobra from being able to swallow them.

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Interesting. Is a ball semi-immune to the venom as well, like a King snake?

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Originally Posted by xdeus

Interesting. Is a ball semi-immune to the venom as well, like a King snake?

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Yes, my understanding is that the current thinking is that they have some level of immunity to the venom but I don't think I have anything documented on that.

-adam

Got the reply from globalherp:

'a friend unfortunately had a dead Ball albino Python is his freezer for months and we though it would be humorous to make this photo

actually all our king cobras at dead rodents'

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Originally Posted by Shelby

Got the reply from globalherp:

'a friend unfortunately had a dead Ball albino Python is his freezer for months and we though it would be humorous to make this photo

actually all our king cobras at dead rodents'

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Thanks for sharing this with us Shelby.

Hmm, humerous.... ok. But it does lay to rest, it is a photo shopped pic then since they say "we though it would be humorous to make this photo".

No no.. it is not photo shopped.. he fed it to the king cobra. I asked him if that was what happened, and he said yes.

By 'make' he means give the bp to the cobra and take the pic.

They specifically fed the albino ball python to their normally rat eating cobra to capture a photograph to print on shirts and sell them.

-adam