Snake Island in Brazil: how to visit, what to see

2024 Author: Harold Hamphrey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:06

There are many places in the world that are notorious. Even at the mention of them, the blood freezes, and the imagination draws all sorts of horrors. Brazil has such an attraction. The island of snakes is the most terrible piece of land known to the world, this is exactly the place where mortal danger lurks under every tree, on every square meter. It comes not from invented ghosts or non-existent monsters, but from very real snakes.

They are rumored to have even bitten the lighthouse keeper's family, including his three daughters, to death. Locals say that there were hundreds of bites on the bodies of the unfortunate. The lighthouse was left here, only now it is automatic, and absolutely all categories of citizens were forbidden to visit the island with snakes in Brazil. The exceptions are people who sometimes need to check the he alth of the lighthouse, and scientists. But they must also obtain special permission to set foot on this inhospitable piece of land.

Snake Island (Brazil): Description

This is the realmof horror and oblivion, officially called Queimada Grande, lies less than 22 miles west of the Brazilian coast. The intriguing island rises above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean by only 210 meters. Its area is very small, approximately 437 square meters, and even then, including the rocky ledges from the southern tip. The shores of the island are steep and impregnable, as if nature itself is hinting to people: they don’t need to come here. Nevertheless, Queimada Grande is very picturesque. Its luscious green tropical vegetation, densely covering the hills, effectively contrasts with the golden color of the rocks, promising gorgeous photos. In the southern part, the same ill-fated lighthouse rises into the sky like a white finger. All this is bathed in blue-blue ocean waters.

Hissing natives

The island of snakes in Brazil broke away from the mainland 11,000 years ago, which made it possible only here and nowhere else on Earth to survive island snakes. Forced to find themselves in an ecosystem from which there is no chance to escape, the reptiles ate everything that moved, and left without natural enemies, they multiplied to disgrace. Now there are conditionally 6 of them per square meter. Taking into account the fact that the reptiles have spread unevenly across the island, somewhere they are not at all, and somewhere they gather in balls of 20 or more copies. Botrops' favorite pastime is to sit on a tree in ambush and pounce on their prey from a height. The main course of their menu is the birds that come to the Snake Island in Brazil to nest. Reptiles diversify their diet with lizards, amphibians and scorpions.

Lifestyle

The island botrops, or the golden spear-headed snake, in its tiny kingdom faces difficulties not only in obtaining food, but also in procreating. All individuals here are close relatives, because outsiders do not come to the island of snakes in Brazil, even for mating. Due to the acute shortage of "grooms" snakes of this species are hermaphrodites, both males and females. The epithet "golden" was assigned to them due to the golden color of the scales covering the body from the head and, as they say, to the toes. But in captivity, the "gold" turns gray-brown. On their body for disguise, nature scattered several dark stripes. The length of snakes is more than a meter, but more often it does not exceed 70 cm. The epithet "spear-headed" was given to them for a flat, pointed muzzle at the end. Botrops are diurnal, looking for birds among the trees. They begin to mate in March and remain sexually active until the end of June. The serpents are born alive. There can be up to 10 of them in a nest. Young people, perhaps to protect themselves from hungry older comrades, are nocturnal.

Poisonousness

The island botrops have been found to be the most poisonous of their species. Their venom can kill an average mouse in 2 seconds, and in mammals, tissues begin to die off at the site of the bite almost immediately. Mortality among people is 7%, which is not so little. Moreover, if an antidote is immediately administered to the bitten, it will help only in 3% of cases. Fortunately, only the islandthe snake in Brazil is teeming with these perfect killers, so so far no deaths have been recorded from their teeth. But less poisonous relatives of the island botrops live on the continent. These guys kill over 100 people a year. So that in the future there would be no human claims to the golden snake, the Brazilian government forbade landing on the island. Tourists can only walk around it on boats and boats.