King Cobra's revenge
Watch this show and you will change your idea about myths in India. King Cobras do not have a vision nor a hearing ability..but your hair will creep when you see the king cobra staring at its captor with anger...some things science has yet to prove but they nevertheless exists.
Mark's O Shea's Cobra's revenge
Mission Statement:
Mark sets out to investigate the many myths surrounding snakes in India. Local mythology states that if you kill a cobra, its mate will come and kill you in revenge. Perhaps getting to the bottom of this famous cobra myth will reveal something about a snake Mark has never caught in the wild, a snake that delivers enough venom to kill ten men, the King cobra.
Finding the rare and elusive king of snakes isn’t easy, but if Mark succeeds he may be able to determine at first hand whether they are indeed ‘special snakes’, whether they have a quality he has never previously encountered in all his dealings with serpents, intelligence.
He joins Mohammad Anees, an Indian snake expert, who has captured over 4,000 cobras in and around India’s high-tech software capital Bangalore, to discover how dangerous snakes and people live close together in this busy city. A common feature of life in India, this might help explain why over 10,000 Indians a year die of snakebite.
The aim is to capture common and king cobras and using techniques and sounds recorded by reptile acoustics expert Dr Bruce Young, determine whether cobras, and king cobras in particular, can actually hear airborne sounds. The common belief is that snakes do not hear airborne sounds but if that is the case, why does the king cobra growl? Could it be so a king cobra in distress could call other king cobras for help? Could this be a scientific basis for the cobras revenge myth?
Mark, Anees and Bruce visit two Indian king cobra hotspots in an attempt to capture king cobras for Bruce’s auditory tests. They travel to the remote, crocodile infested mangrove swamps of Bhitarkanika in the northeast, and then venture into the mountainous jungles of the ancient Western Ghats to the southwest. In this region the local people hold king cobras in such awe and reverence that even in death they are given the same rights as departed relatives.
If Mark does succeed in coming face to face with a wild king cobra for the first time in his life, he’ll be able to see for himself whether locals are right when they say it is easy to get lost in the eyes of this remarkable snake. Maybe this, rather than snakes calling each other for help, is the key to the secret of the cobras revenge myth….
A large King cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is one of the most impressive snakes in the world.
Scientific name Ophiophagus hannah- King cobra
Director's notes: The Cobra's Revenge
Being a director on O’Shea is one of the best jobs in television. You get to go to some of the world’s most beautiful places, like New Caledonia, Krakatau, and India. You come across some beautiful and amazing creatures, like paradise tree snakes, orb weaving spiders, and giant geckos. And best of all you get to meet wonderful people, like Bob Pullen in Guam, Simon Cook in Indonesia and Mohammed Anees in India, to name just three.
However, it is not without its stresses and strains, and the making of “The Cobra’s Revenge” was no exception…
The Spectacled or Common Indian cobra (Naja naja) is widespread throughout South Asia. It is responsible for thousands of fatal snakebites.
Getting permission to film reptiles in India was a long, tortuous and complicated business. In addition to that I arrived in the country on September 11th, and following the events of that day there were chances of the region being sufficiently destabilised for filming to have been called off. Thankfully that didn’t happen, but crucial internal flights were cancelled and airport security was intense and time consuming. The worst moments were when half our filming equipment was removed from the hold just before take off from Bangalore, Swiss Air, who were flying our American expert over from New York, stopping all flights, and Delhi officials confiscating my lucky tennis ball from my hand baggage.
Add to all that the perennial O’Shea problem about whether we’d actually find the snake at the heart of our programme, the rare and elusive king cobra, and you have a very stressed and worried TV director on your hands.
However as filming progressed it slowly dawned on me that we were getting some excellent material. Mark O’Shea was on sparkling form, and the production team of cameraman Richard Edwards, sound recordist Terry Meadowcroft, and Associate producer Matthew Catling, were working their socks off to ensure the pictures, sound and content were top quality.
In Bangalore we achieved our objective of finding many snakes, including several wonderful spectacled cobras. In the swamps of Bhitarkanika we got some marvellous footage of monitor lizards, chameleons and crocodiles, and in the forests of the Western Ghats we miraculously captured a magnificent king cobra as it feasted on a ratsnake.
Luck was certainly on our side in terms of the reptiles we found, the people we filmed, and the wide ranging story elements we were able to cover, including a child playing with a cobra in a snake charming village, an experiment to investigate whether snakes can hear, and a moving king cobra funeral.
Some people say “No Pain No Gain”, and there are certainly elements of this shoot I would prefer not to relive; pulling leeches off my stomach, getting an incredibly painful skin rash from blood sucking insects in my bed, and having diarrhoea for six weeks for example, but at the end of the day I gained so much from my time in India in terms of life experience, friendships, and happy memories, that I would happily go through it all again. I think…
Julian Dismore
Director
Mark's O Shea's Cobra's revenge
Mission Statement:
Mark sets out to investigate the many myths surrounding snakes in India. Local mythology states that if you kill a cobra, its mate will come and kill you in revenge. Perhaps getting to the bottom of this famous cobra myth will reveal something about a snake Mark has never caught in the wild, a snake that delivers enough venom to kill ten men, the King cobra.
Finding the rare and elusive king of snakes isn’t easy, but if Mark succeeds he may be able to determine at first hand whether they are indeed ‘special snakes’, whether they have a quality he has never previously encountered in all his dealings with serpents, intelligence.
He joins Mohammad Anees, an Indian snake expert, who has captured over 4,000 cobras in and around India’s high-tech software capital Bangalore, to discover how dangerous snakes and people live close together in this busy city. A common feature of life in India, this might help explain why over 10,000 Indians a year die of snakebite.
The aim is to capture common and king cobras and using techniques and sounds recorded by reptile acoustics expert Dr Bruce Young, determine whether cobras, and king cobras in particular, can actually hear airborne sounds. The common belief is that snakes do not hear airborne sounds but if that is the case, why does the king cobra growl? Could it be so a king cobra in distress could call other king cobras for help? Could this be a scientific basis for the cobras revenge myth?
Mark, Anees and Bruce visit two Indian king cobra hotspots in an attempt to capture king cobras for Bruce’s auditory tests. They travel to the remote, crocodile infested mangrove swamps of Bhitarkanika in the northeast, and then venture into the mountainous jungles of the ancient Western Ghats to the southwest. In this region the local people hold king cobras in such awe and reverence that even in death they are given the same rights as departed relatives.
If Mark does succeed in coming face to face with a wild king cobra for the first time in his life, he’ll be able to see for himself whether locals are right when they say it is easy to get lost in the eyes of this remarkable snake. Maybe this, rather than snakes calling each other for help, is the key to the secret of the cobras revenge myth….
A large King cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is one of the most impressive snakes in the world.
Scientific name Ophiophagus hannah- King cobra
Director's notes: The Cobra's Revenge
Being a director on O’Shea is one of the best jobs in television. You get to go to some of the world’s most beautiful places, like New Caledonia, Krakatau, and India. You come across some beautiful and amazing creatures, like paradise tree snakes, orb weaving spiders, and giant geckos. And best of all you get to meet wonderful people, like Bob Pullen in Guam, Simon Cook in Indonesia and Mohammed Anees in India, to name just three.
However, it is not without its stresses and strains, and the making of “The Cobra’s Revenge” was no exception…
The Spectacled or Common Indian cobra (Naja naja) is widespread throughout South Asia. It is responsible for thousands of fatal snakebites.
Getting permission to film reptiles in India was a long, tortuous and complicated business. In addition to that I arrived in the country on September 11th, and following the events of that day there were chances of the region being sufficiently destabilised for filming to have been called off. Thankfully that didn’t happen, but crucial internal flights were cancelled and airport security was intense and time consuming. The worst moments were when half our filming equipment was removed from the hold just before take off from Bangalore, Swiss Air, who were flying our American expert over from New York, stopping all flights, and Delhi officials confiscating my lucky tennis ball from my hand baggage.
Add to all that the perennial O’Shea problem about whether we’d actually find the snake at the heart of our programme, the rare and elusive king cobra, and you have a very stressed and worried TV director on your hands.
However as filming progressed it slowly dawned on me that we were getting some excellent material. Mark O’Shea was on sparkling form, and the production team of cameraman Richard Edwards, sound recordist Terry Meadowcroft, and Associate producer Matthew Catling, were working their socks off to ensure the pictures, sound and content were top quality.
In Bangalore we achieved our objective of finding many snakes, including several wonderful spectacled cobras. In the swamps of Bhitarkanika we got some marvellous footage of monitor lizards, chameleons and crocodiles, and in the forests of the Western Ghats we miraculously captured a magnificent king cobra as it feasted on a ratsnake.
Luck was certainly on our side in terms of the reptiles we found, the people we filmed, and the wide ranging story elements we were able to cover, including a child playing with a cobra in a snake charming village, an experiment to investigate whether snakes can hear, and a moving king cobra funeral.
Some people say “No Pain No Gain”, and there are certainly elements of this shoot I would prefer not to relive; pulling leeches off my stomach, getting an incredibly painful skin rash from blood sucking insects in my bed, and having diarrhoea for six weeks for example, but at the end of the day I gained so much from my time in India in terms of life experience, friendships, and happy memories, that I would happily go through it all again. I think…
Julian Dismore
Director
Comments