PAPUA NEW GUINEA SNAKEBITE PROJECT
DECISION TIME

As luck would have it, the demonstration was delayed as workers came in from the plantation but that suited me as I needed to sort out which snakes to use and set up a camera to film it. At 16:00 I began with the boas, then the pythons, then the keelback, treesnake and ground snake, and then finished with the venomous species, the crowned snake and small-eyed snake.

Mark and Ben setting up the camera	Mark demonstrating the Southern green tree python, Morelia viridis
the 1.8 m Southern white-lipped python, Leiopython hoserae	and one of the New Guinea small-eyed snakes , Micropechis ikaheka

New Guinea small-eyed snakes , Micropechis ikaheka that killed a woman in 1987

The demo went very well and I managed to get about half to get half the audience to touch tbe large python. It also inspired one man to bring a preserved small-eyed snake in a jar to show me, the label bore the date 1987 and stated it was "mild venom" (we now know different now). The story was that this snake had killed a pregnant women in Mamba when it was a coconut plantation in 1987.

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