James Ashe Antivenom Trust

Cobras often eat other snakes, and our spitters will definitely eat carrion.

James and I collected one that had found and eaten a very dead, poor little Egg-eater who had been murdered by a gardener (Watamu area) the day before. We were called to the scene when the gardener saw the smallish cobra come out to have a sniff at the body. The cobra had gone back into a hole before we got there.

The householder gave us a cup of tea and during that short time the cobra re-emerged and ate the smelly body. We caught the cobra and it regurgitated the Egg-eater in the bag. Ugh!!

On another occasion I was called to collect a large spitter which could not even bend in the middle because he had eaten a huge Puff adder that had just been killed by gardeners grass cutting.

A final example to turn the stomach yet again - we went to catch a cobra in a shallow sand pit. It smelled appalling and was very fat. It regurgitated an extremely decomposed young Monitor lizard that had been tossed away into the pit. That is what I could smell when handling the cobra.

On the other hand, it seems possible to me that Anton’s dead but life-like Puff adder actually had been killed by a Black mamba. You will recall that one was reported seen in the area.

I would expect a cobra killing a Puff adder to hang on. There would be a bit of a fight and lashing about. The Puff adder would probably end up looking dead.

A Black mamba would quickly give one or more bites and the Puff adder would die more peacefully, giving the lifelike appearance Anton described.

The Black mamba would not then want to eat the Puff adder, but a cobra wandering around later in the evening would be delighted to come across a free meal!

Here is more story-telling from our friend and colleague Anthony Childs:

“About seven years ago Masai in Amboseli took me to a cobra which they had killed in theprocess of eating a Puff adder.

What was amazing was the size of thePuff adder.  It was just over six feet long, and already halfway down an eight and a half foot long Ashe’s Spitting cobra’s throat! The Masai had killed the cobra halfway through its
meal.

In this case the cobra in question had not killed the Puff adder.  It had been killed the previous day and was decomposing.

All this shows is that Naja ashei likes Puff adders, even  decomposing ones.

I remember James Ashe telling me a story of being called out for a snake in someone’s garden.  When he got there, the snake in question had disappeared. On the lawn was a dead egg-eater (Dasypeltis medici lamuensis) that was badly decomposing.

James went in for a drink and a chat.  When leaving, he intended to remove the egg-eater and approached it with some confidence, only to find a cobra swallowing it!  James bagged the cobra and added it to his collection at Bio-Ken Snake Farm. Interestingly enough that type of cobra has now been elevated to a species now named after him - Naja ashei.”

Last night, my neighbour suddenly came running to say a snake was raiding one of his guinea fowl nests. He had gone out in the dark to take an egg for his supper and had “put in his hand and touched something soft.” Quickly shining his torch he discovered that it was a snake.  Perhaps he should have shone the torch first, and then he would have seen where he was putting his hand.  However, in this case he was lucky!

The snake turned out to be a beautiful red Egg-Eater who had just managed to swallow one of the hard-shelled eggs into her throat by the time I got there. Our local egg eaters usually are grey but we get the occasional red ones and we are always glad to see any of them.

The helpless snake regurgitated the egg when I picked her up. The egg didn’t break, as guinea fowl eggs have strong shells. My neighbour was able to rinse it off and add the egg to his meal!