I once wrote a post telling a story of how a snake bit a neighbour's son and the issues we went through before being able to get the necessary antivenom to save the life of the boy. Perhaps due to the location of their apartment, a couple of snakes have been sighted and killed within the same environment after the snake bite episode.
As an ecologist, the killing of every snake sighted gives me a bit of worry because every organism has its own ecological importance which could in some ways affect the existence of humans. In other words, the position organisms occupy and the roles they play affect every other organism in the ecosystem. Whether the removal of organisms from the ecosystem will have a severe impact on the ecosystem depends on the roles they play.
In actual fact, the removal of certain organisms from an ecosystem may lead to a major disruption or even a disappearance of the ecosystem. Such organisms are known as keystone species. If such were to be the case, how are we sure that all these snakes being killed are not keystone species?
Looking at a hypothetical food chain of the environment around here, the green plants form the bases of all food chains as a producer. Rodents and insects feed on the green plants as primary consumers while snakes depend on rodents for their foods. Some humans do not just kill snakes but eat them if they are big or meaty enough. Apart from humans, some predator birds depend largely on snakes as their prey. These predator birds also have their roles in the ecosystem that might border around dispersing seeds of important trees, pollination, etc.
The implication of removing snakes from the hypothetical food chain above has a lot of multiplier effects. Since snakes limit the population of rodents in the ecosystem, their removal as a result of indiscriminate killing means that the rodents population will thrive in the environment. Consequently, more pressure will be exerted on the green plants in the community, including those being cultivated for food production purposes. Thus, humans would need to find artificial means of curtailing the menace of rodents or suffer losses as far as food production is concerned. This may mean worsened hunger for the human population.
On the other hand, birds of prey that largely depend on snakes for their food will start starving due to the indiscriminate killing of snakes by humans. Reduction in their population size means limited pollination and seed dispersal. Meaning that a reduction in the population of snakes in the ecosystem has the potential to impact food supply to humans in two ways.
Does it mean that we should preserve snakes?
From time immemorial, snakes have always been enemies of man. Here in this part of the world, the first instinct that comes to anyone that sees a snake is to kill it, provided they are bold enough. For those that lack bravery, the first thing they do is to run for safety. This is because the reptilia creatures are generally considered very dangerous. In actual fact, many people have lost their lives to snake bites.
Advancement in science, however, has made us know that not all the snakes we come across are dangerous. There are actually a few folks that keep snakes as pets. Many of these snakes being kept as pets are either harmless (non-poisonous) or have been tamed.
As an ecologist, I am a staunch advocate of conserving biodiversity of different forms. Thus, I will be all for not killing snakes irrespective of whether they are poisonous or otherwise. However, the danger posed to human lives by those that are poisonous among the creatures cannot be overlooked. Consequently, a compromise is needed in order to strike a balance that will favour both conservations of biodiversity and the consecration of human lives.
The compromise would be to limit the population of poisonous snakes around human populations. This can be done by capturing them and releasing them into the wild just as it is done in the popular TV show, snakes in the city. In the absence of the technical know-how to safely capture, there will not be any other option than to kill them, preferably after confirming that they are poisonous, if possible.
Relevant professionals have ways of identifying snakes for possible poisonous characteristics. According to reports, the shape of the head is a determinant factor in identifying poisonous snakes from non-poisonous ones. The poisonous ones have bulbous or triangular heads as a result of the presence of poison sacs below their jaws. The non-poisonous ones, on the other hand, usually have rounded heads.
The truth is even if one knows these differences, there might not be enough time and space to determine the poisonousness or otherwise of a snake when sighted. Be that as it may and due to the frequency at which snakes are sighted within the house I live in, my go-to solution would now be to spray the surroundings with snake-specific pesticides at regular intervals.
What do you think?