King Cobras: The Zodiac System In China

When I was very young, I remember that my mother held me in her arms, telling me stories about China and her culture. She told me that I was a snake, and I, naive at the time, didn’t understand why. She explained to me that the zodiac system in China, shengxiao, was a running cycle of twelve years. The year that I was born in, 2001, just happened to be the year of the snake.

I thought that snakes were scary and ruthless: not a great representation of who I am.

A prime example is the king cobra. It’s the longest venomous snake known today, with an astonishing length of up to 18 feet. As if this wasn’t menacing enough: when threatened, it will shoot up, and stand tall. The king cobra can even look its victim straight in the eye, but the main purpose of this shooting mechanism is so the snake can see better, and strike more easily. It has also been proven that king cobras display a significant amount of intelligence when they calculate the perfect time to strike. …show more content…
It’s so powerful that if bitten, it would take only thirty minutes for a human to die. Just one bite has enough venom to cause the demise of up to 20 men. The power of king cobras is not to be messed with! Their venom can even kill elephants in a matter of hours. The first symptoms of a fatal bite are severe pain, dizziness, and paralysis or coma. Then, respiratory failure occurs, which soon leads to death. A cobra would attack when they feel