{"id":123171,"date":"2025-09-06T12:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T12:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/123171\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T12:47:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T12:47:08","slug":"no-mistaking-legendary-king-after-chance-encounter-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/123171\/","title":{"rendered":"No mistaking legendary \u2018king\u2019 after chance encounter in India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An Indian Forest Service employee has shared an image showing a large snake pausing in a clearing with its head and neck raised in a classic cobra posture.<\/p>\n<p>Parveen Kaswan stated via\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ParveenKaswan\/status\/1848407419514167705\" rel=\"nofollow\">X<\/a>: \u201cThis beauty. Let\u2019s see who can guess the species.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Responses quickly formed an overwhelming consensus that the snake in question was, as one commenter remarked, \u201cThe King himself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nationalzoo.si.edu\/animals\/king-cobra\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">King cobras<\/a>, which can measure 15-plus feet, are the longest venomous snakes on earth. They inhabit rainforests and plains in northern India, southern China, and Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n<p>Although rarely encountered, king cobras are revered in India, where they\u2019re considered the national reptile.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ftw.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/outdoors\/2025\/09\/04\/massive-alligator-mississippi-record-hunting-season\/85980130007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ALSO: Massive alligator bagged in Mississippi falls just shy of record<\/a><\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re not typically aggressive toward humans, choosing to escape rather than bite in most cases. But a king cobra bite, if not treated immediately, can kill a person in less than 30 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Kaswan, at the time of this post, had not provided details regarding the sighting. Nor had he responded to comments beneath his X post.<\/p>\n<p>One follower, referring to a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.mongabay.com\/short-article\/four-of-a-kind-king-cobra-is-a-quad-of-species-not-one-study-finds\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recent study<\/a>\u00a0that suggests there are four types of king cobras in India, commented:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s now established as 4 different species in different ranges. Assuming this is in northern India, it&#8217;s\u00a0Ophiophagus hannah. If it were from the Western Ghats, it&#8217;d be\u00a0Ophiophagus kaalinga, based on the recent classification.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another follower observed: \u201cThe Most Mythical of Serpents. The One who Straddles Terrestrial Earth &amp; Heavenly Divinity. The Companion to Lord Shiva. Worshipped &amp; Feared in equal measure by Man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A man claiming to be a physician remarked, \u201cWe are not left with much to do when a patient is brought to us after it has bitten them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2013This is a repost from October 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Indian Forest Service employee has shared an image showing a large snake pausing in a clearing with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[86662,64,63,8172,8179,14589,86664,1791,5623,86663,1209,36227,44,5070,323,54447,15849,86665,128,8173,15035,13882,39,441,86661,65349,338],"class_list":["post-123171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-amphibians","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-biological","tag-biological-sciences","tag-breaking","tag-breaking-news-social","tag-content","tag-evergreen","tag-evergreen-content","tag-india","tag-negative","tag-news","tag-offbeat","tag-overall","tag-overall-negative","tag-reptiles","tag-reptiles-u0026-amphibians","tag-science","tag-sciences","tag-snakes","tag-social","tag-top-stories","tag-u0026","tag-venomous","tag-venomous-snakes","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}