Portraits of snake charm worth elephant-killing bite

Rowan Hooper, news editor

King cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) - the world's longest venomous snake (Image: Mark Laita)

Talk about taking risks in the name of art. In the course of his work photographing snakes, Mark Laita was recently bitten by a black mamba - one of the 10 most venomous land snakes in the world. Bites have been known to kill a human in under 30 minutes, but luckily for Laita it was a "dry" bite, where venom is not injected. In 2006 a bite killed an adult elephant. Laita says he didn't realise he'd even taken a photo of the mamba hanging off his leg until the next day. "It all happened so fast," he says.

A lucky escape (Image: Mark Laita)

Laita says he finds snakes so evocative and sensual that photographing them - in zoos, serpentariums, anti-venom labs and private collections - is worth the occasional close call. Like a snake charmer, he has come to understand snake behaviour, shooting about 50 images of each animal to achieve the best results.

If the photos help publicise the plight of reptiles, so much the better. In a review of snake populations around the world, Chris Reading at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK, and colleagues found that 11 of 17 populations of snakes studied plummeted between 1998 and 2002. In five populations the numbers were stable.

"The jury is still out regarding why populations of some snake species appear to be declining whilst others appear to be relatively stable," says Reading. However, habitat loss is probably to blame for the declining populations, with both climate change and direct destruction by humans likely causes. "Habitat loss will almost inevitably also have an effect on the prey species of many snakes and so this may be one of the main pathways resulting in some of the observed snake declines," he says.

For more of Mark Laita's snake images, see this week's magazine.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1bf6677a/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A10Cportraits0Eof0Esnake0Echarm0Eworth0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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