Tagamoa Horned Snakes: Fact or Fiction?
This week, Tagamao residents in Cairo have been in panic mode ever since rumors started circulating that a horned viper made an unpleasant appearance in a gated community called Tabarak.
So what is a horned viper? It’s a species of large snakes with a diet that consists of rodents, birds, and lizards. Horned vipers swallow their prey in one piece. Sounds horrifying!
Following the social media frenzy, many claimed that vipers started appearing due to the posioning of street dogs, who usually fed on them. However during an interview with El-Watan News, veterinarian Ahmed El-Nabrawy, claimed there is no scientific proof of a correlation between the abscence of dogs and vipers.
The doctor continued to argue that this is a single incident, and there are still street dogs around, adding that there are thousands of records of dogs that have been poisoned by this snake. The only explanation El-Nabrawy had is the expansion of residential areas into the deserts that are the natural habitats of vipers.
Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation will help guide citizens in combating the horned vipers that appeared in multiple areas in the Fifth Settlement. The ministry’s role will end at guiding citizens before shifting their focus to combating pests and insects in agricultural areas.
