My eye was taken when looking through JOHN DUDLEY ROMER’s (1920-1982) notebook* on snake specimens he had collected or been given in Hong Kong. Under notes on the King Cobra or Hamadryad (Ophiophagus hannah) he wrote:
Specimen from Lan Tao Island (Fatal Snake-bite Case)
A specimen (still alive) which had killed a man on Lan Tao Island [now Lantau or Lantao] was received from Marine Police on 8th August 1957. It was retained alive until 10th August 1957, then killed and returned to Marine Police.
After noting data from its scales (important features for taxonomy and identification) and sex (female), Romer founds its length was 2,135 mm immediately after death, 2½ cm shorter than when alive. In short this King Cobra was 7 ft 1 inch.
The China Mail of Friday 9 August 1957 reported the case but were waiting confirmation that the man had died. Romer told the newspaper that the snake is very rare in Hong Kong.
While snake-bite fatalities were rare in Hong Kong, those working in the countryside were at the greatest risk from this and other venomous snakes. With the virtual end of agriculture in Hong Kong that risk has probably shifted largely to those clearing vegetation or jogging/walking for pleasure.
The King Cobra is still uncommon in Hong Kong but, as shown in the YouTube video below, some herpetologists have been lucky enough to see one. Newspaper reports, such as the one shown from 2018, show that King Cobras turn up where they are not made welcome.
The King Cobra, which is not a cobra at all, is the longest venomous snake, sometimes in excess of 5 metres, in parts of its range, and thus able to strike from a considerable greater distance than the much more common Chinese Cobra (Naja atra) for example. The venom is mainly neotoxic; human deaths can occur in 30 minutes. As its generic name suggests, it is an important predator of snakes but not averse, apparently, to making a meal of other vertebrates, sometimes I read constricting its prey.
In 1957 there was no publication in Hong Kong which enabled the recognition and identification of the venomous snakes that occur there or of what to do if bitten. Romer prepared such a guide for the Hong Kong Government in 1959. That was updated a a fully-illustrated booklet in 1965. Romer’s hobby and job, as the head of pest control, came, for once, into symbiosis.
*After Romer’s death his papers were deposited in the library of the Zoological Society of London. The last time I was there I did not have time to see what that Romer archive held. Then Jack Greatrex of the Department of History in the University of Hong Kong contacted me. As part of his research on the history of pest control he was going to be in London and offered to send me his gleanings from the ZSL library. I of course accepted gratefully and Jack, now at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, sent me photographs of the various pages.
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