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February 6, 2026<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Snakes on a train? King cobras may be riding the rails in India<\/p>\n A new study suggests king cobras may be accidentally boarding trains across India<\/p>\n By Richard Kemeny edited by Andrea Thompson<\/span><\/p>\n A king cobra of a species close to the one that was the subject of the study.<\/p>\n Amith Nag Photography\/Getty Images<\/p>\n King cobras, the world\u2019s longest venomous snakes, are popping up in parts of India where they have no business being\u2014and it turns out they may be inadvertently boarding trains to get there. In addition to alarming passengers in something of a real-life spin of the 2006 movie Snakes on a Plane, the reptiles can end up in places where they can\u2019t survive and, if antagonized, may pose a potentially fatal threat to humans.<\/p>\n Reports of king cobras and other snakes found in railway stations, or wrapped around and even inside trains, have been on the rise in India. In 2017 Dikansh Parmar of the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Germany, rescued an Indian cobra (Naja naja) coiled around a train\u2019s window bars that was hissing and, understandably, frightening passengers. \u201cIt was very afraid of people. It inflated its hood and tried to show that \u2018I\u2019m bigger than you\u2019 to scare everyone,\u201d Parmar says. \u201cI just gently pulled it down, and then I caught it.\u201d<\/p>\n In a study published January 26 in Biotropica, Parmar and his colleagues aimed to see how snakes were ending up so far from home. They used climate models to map the suitable habitat for the Western Ghats king cobra (Ophiophagus kaalinga), a snake newly recognized as its own species in 2024 and found in the state of Goa. Of the 47 places Western Ghats king cobras were rescued across the state between 2002 and 2024, five were completely unsuitable locations, including one snake found in a port city around 120 kilometers away by train from its natural range. All five outliers were found within a few hundred meters of railway tracks or stations.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n The Western Ghats King Cobra that emerged from beneath a pile of railway tracks stored at Chandor station for ongoing railway maintenance and repair.<\/p>\n Sourabh Yadav; from Parmar et al., doi.org\/10.1111\/btp.70157; CC by 4.0<\/p>\n These king cobras prefer the cool, rainy montane forests along Goa\u2019s eastern border, not the dry, lowland western part of the state, says study co-author Hinrich Kaiser, a herpetologist at Victor Valley College in California. \u201cThey need to have a certain amount of moisture to incubate eggs,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Sometimes trains stop for days to collect goods or because of rains, the researchers say, which may give the snakes an opportunity to hop on. Why they would do so is unknown, though they may be hunting other snakes or rodents, or seeking shelter, the researchers suggest, then settling down on the trains to digest.<\/p>\n The idea proposed in the paper is intriguing but extremely hard to test, says Emily Taylor, a biologist at California Polytechnic State University, who wasn\u2019t involved in the research. \u201cThis is what good science does\u2014provides a strong hypothesis that we can continue testing as new evidence accumulates,\u201d she says. Tracking the cobras with transmitters or genetically matched distant populations could provide some of this evidence, the authors suggest.<\/p>\n Thankfully, though king cobras are lightning fast and have a strong venom, they are unlikely to attack humans unless cornered or provoked, Kaiser says. \u201cYou are not food, so they much prefer to get out of your way.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. 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I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 6, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Snakes on a train? King cobras may be riding the rails in India A new study suggests king cobras may be accidentally boarding trains across India By Richard Kemeny edited by Andrea Thompson A king cobra of a species close to the one that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[22910,426,2139,14162,22462,19258,1424],"class_list":{"0":"post-43977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-cobras","9":"tag-india","10":"tag-king","11":"tag-rails","12":"tag-riding","13":"tag-snakes","14":"tag-train"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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