Baby introduced to Cobra

Has anybody ever seen anything like this?

YouTube

😲

Any Indians, or persons with a good knowledge of India, present who can explain to me the point of this exercise?

-m.

Originally posted by mikelom
Has anybody ever seen anything like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEVq_fGsY-o

😲

Any Indians, or persons with a good knowledge of India, present who can explain to me the point of this exercise?

-m.

That is a bit disturbing and it says they are probably training the baby to not fear cobra's from an early age so they can be later trained to be one of those snake charmers making money on the side of the road as entertainment for visitors.

What is clear about that snake is it has been de-fanged so there is no danger from venom, they may even have done an operation to take out the venom organ too.

You can see it clearly striking the baby several times and no teeth came out so I would imagine that was not accidental, then the baby ends up wrestling with the snake.

As you can imagine, if that was in the wild there would soon be one dead baby on the ground.

Originally posted by sonhouse
That is a bit disturbing and it says they are probably training the baby to not fear cobra's from an early age so they can be later trained to be one of those snake charmers making money on the side of the road as entertainment for visitors.

What is clear about that snake is it has been de-fanged so there is no danger from venom, they may even have done ...[text shortened]...

As you can imagine, if that was in the wild there would soon be one dead baby on the ground.

You're right of course - this particular snake is not dangerous. But it is still very disturbing to watch. Do you mean that the snakes used by snake charmers are also harmless?

Originally posted by lolof
You're right of course - this particular snake is not dangerous. But it is still very disturbing to watch. Do you mean that the snakes used by snake charmers are also harmless?

I imagine that is a little secret snake charmers don't want tourists to know. Would YOU do snake charming with a live cobra? Live in the sense of not clipping its fangs or taking out the venom gland?

Originally posted by mikelom
Has anybody ever seen anything like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEVq_fGsY-o

😲

Any Indians, or persons with a good knowledge of India, present who can explain to me the point of this exercise?

-m.

Cheap toys.
YouTube&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Originally posted by wolfgang59
Cheap toys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKa2dt1Dzeg&feature=endscreen&NR=1

😀 😀

Yeah, saw that one too!

I find it almost ironic though, as to teach the children NOT to fear Cobras will likely cause a few incidents later on, when they see a wild one and try to play with it! 🙁

-m.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I imagine that is a little secret snake charmers don't want tourists to know. Would YOU do snake charming with a live cobra? Live in the sense of not clipping its fangs or taking out the venom gland?

I'm one of those tourists that are easy to fool 🙂 I wouldn't dive from great heights for money either... or enter a cage with wild animals in a circus...

Watched the clip, also looked at a couple of others, including one ostensibly made by people in the community (rather than Western tourists with phones). Then did some research.
Seems it's another case of Western eyes seeing something that they don't understand, and jumping to all sorts of conclusions. I found references to defanged cobras as pets, or objects to be treated with reverence (seems to be a Hindu thing, but what would I know?), also references to poor villagers and snake charming families.
Some of the comments from clip viewers talked about child abuse. To me that's a complete nonsense, like an awful lot of stuff on the internet.