Biography Black Mamba

Animals “In Africa, you should remember the following: elephants are dangerous, leopards are dangerous, the black mamba is most dangerous of everyone,” said the insidious Ellie Driver from the cult film diagram of Quentin Tarantino “Kill Bill”.

And she was in many ways the right in the film by Ellie Driver, whose role was played by Daryl Hannah, puts in a suitcase with money, intended for the former colleague for the detachment of hired killers, Baddu Michael Madsen, a poisonous snake, from the bites of which he dies in a couple of minutes and dies. At the same time, in the Latin name of the snake - Dendroskis Polylepis where DendroSpis is “wood aspect”, and Polylepis is “multi -core” - its color is not played in any way.

The fact is that in fact the snake is not at all black: as a rule, the upper part of its body has a dark olive, olive-green or grayish-brown color, and the belly is light brown or dirty white. Mamba owes its name to the black mouth, which she demonstrates to intimidate the enemy. Gunter in his short description of only 7 lines also focused on this feature. This is how the mouth of a black mamba looks, for which the snake received its sinister nickname.

So, in a year in one of the Kenyan national parks, such a snake bites an adult elephant named Eleanor weighing 3.4 tons. After a short period of time, the first symptoms of poisoning with poison became noticeable: loss of coordination and paralysis. All attempts by relatives and rangers to help the bitten elephants were unsuccessful - after 24 hours of torment, Eleanor died. With one bite, a black mamba produces a dose of poison capable of killing 15 adult men.

The deadly dose for humans is only 10-15 mg, but a mamba is capable of injecting to mg in one bite. As a rule, the snake makes several aiming shots to the head or trunk of the enemy or victim, after which it crawls to the side and waits for the poison. If the snake bit a person by the heel or finger, then the death can occur in four hours. If the bite was perfect in an area located closer to the face or neck, then death will occur much faster - about 30 minutes later.

Only the antidote can be saved, which must be introduced in the first 20 minutes after the bite, otherwise the fatal outcome is inevitable. However, when you see a black mamba, you should not immediately say goodbye to life: it will not chase you. Contrary to rumors, the snake never attacks a person on his own initiative, but if she feels at least the slightest threat, she will instantly strike.

When a black mamba swallows large prey, her trachea shifts to the side so that the snake can breathe. The weight of the victim presses on the trachea, causing its reduction, thereby the food cannot fall into the respiratory tract. Large rats or birds for the mamba are not a problem - the snake digests prey, which can weigh up to a third of its own weight, in just 8 hours.

To eat and digest a proportional amount of meat, an adult, a healthy person would need at least days. Pulling the tongue, the snake brings it to two recesses in the sky Jacobson organs, which are directly related to the brain. He analyzes the smells, warning the snake about the danger, or that a potential victim is somewhere nearby. The form of the snake language in this case carries important information about its mood: in a calm individual, the tips of the tongue are reduced together, in aggressively configured - divorced to the sides.

A huge number of rumors and legends walk around the Black Mambe, and all of them are based on real meetings with this snake. Thus, many residents of South and East Africa believe that black mamba live in pairs, and if you kill one of them, the second will certainly take revenge. Such a belief appeared after one tragic case, which was recorded by the famous herpetologist J. The farmer chopped off the head of a black mamba with a shovel and put a dead snake in the bed, deciding to play his own wife.

In anticipation of a successful draw, the farmer carefully laid the corpse of an aspid on the bed, after which he sent his wife to the bedroom. He hoped to hear screams, which for some reason did not follow-everything happened too quickly. The farmer shouted himself, when, going into the room, he discovered there the corpse of his wife, a dead snake and another participant in the tragedy - a male of a black mamba.

However, this is an isolated case because in fact, black mamba does not form steam - they live one by one and converge once a year for mating. As a rule, snakes arrange their home in the hollows of trees and abandoned rodents or other reptiles. Dark nooks in houses are also an ideal haven for these reptiles. Often they can hold for cars of cars, as a result of which fatal bites sometimes receive inattentive drivers.

The material was first published in June, partially updated in February the author of the text: Sergey Belyakov.