Hyderabad: Friends of Snakes Society (FOS), a non-profit animal organization operating in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, successfully rescued 13,028 snakes in Hyderabad in 2024, with a majority of cases involving cobras.
Data on the snakes rescued indicates that species like the Spectacled Cobra (scientific name Naja naja) and Indian Rat Snake (scientific name Ptyas Mucosa) have high adaptability to urban and peri-urban areas accounting for 47.5 per cent and 24 per cent of the rescues respectively.
Other species rescued include the Checkered Keelback, Common Bronzeback Tree Snake and the Indian Rock Python. The year 2023-24 indicates a notable increase in rescues from the previous year with the figure jumping from 3,389 to 13,028. It is interesting to note that these cases involved no snake bite incidents.
Snake bites student at Telangana school, second in two days
Apart from rescue missions, FOS also conducts awareness programs such as debunking several myths surrounding snakes and providing education on snake bite remedies and treatment procedures.
On their website, FOS mentions how rapid urbanization, deforestation and shrinking of habitats have caused a surge in human-snake conflict incidents.
They mention that even though some venomous snakes are harmful to humans, these reptiles overall make up a crucial component of a healthy ecosystem. A decline in their population can result in imbalanced food webs and an undesirable population explosion of their prey species.
In the past decade, FOS has successfully rescued and rehabilitated more than 75,000 snakes.
