TODDLER BITES SNAKE TO DEATH
A toddler has chewed a snake to death in northern India, horrifying his family.
The 3-year-old named Ayush had been playing outside his home in the Madnapur village in the Farrukhabad district when his grandmother heard him screaming, Indian English-language daily The Tribunereported on Monday.
When she rushed out to see what was the matter, she found a small chewed-up snake hanging out of the child's mouth.
The shocked grandmother, named Sunita, told The Tribune that she immediately pulled the dead snake out of his mouth.
Once she had cleaned Ayush's mouth, she told his parents who rushed him to the hospital, the paper reported.
The parents put the snake in a bag and brought it with them to the hospital so that they could better explain the situation to the doctors.
Thankfully, the snake was not venomous.
After monitoring the child for 24 hours, the doctors declared that he was fine and out of danger, The Tribune reported.
India is home to nearly 300 snake species that can be found all across the country in a variety of habitats. Over 60 are venomous, more than 40 are mildly venomous and 180 are non-venomous. The exact species of this particular snake is unknown.
It is not clear why or how the toddler came to chew into the snake. Of an estimated 1.2 million snakebite deaths in India from 2000 to 2019, over a quarter were children under the age of 15, according to a World Health Organization report. The WHO has estimated that about 5 million snakebites occur every year in India.
Snakebites are a particular problem in rural areas of the coutnry where people do not typically have easy access to medical care.
As a result many snake incidents go unreported.
Around 90 percent of all snakebites are cased by what are considered to be the big four—common krait, Indian cobra, Russell's viper and saw-scaled viper—which are all incredibly venomous.
Surprisingly, this is not the first time a child has bitten a snake.
In August 2022, a 2-year-old girl in Turkey bit a snake back after it bit her on the lip. The retaliatory bite killed the reptile.
Local media said at the time that neighbors heard the girl screaming after she was bitten in her backyard.
The 20-inch snake was still dangling from her teeth when people rushed outside to see what was going on.
The toddler was taken to the hospital to treat her injuries. After being observed for 24 hours, she was recovering well.
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2023-06-05T11:45:50Z dg43tfdfdgfd