King cobras are hitching rides on trains in Goa. A recent study reported repeated instances of the species being found on trains in the coastal state, drawing attention to how habitat fragmentation and linear infrastructure can bring large snakes into unexpected human-dominated areas.
The king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is a reptile found primarily in tropical forests and distributed widely across South and Southeast Asia. Its average length is about 10 to 13 feet – vertically, that’s about half as tall as a giraffe. The cobra is the world’s longest venomous snake. It feeds mainly on other snakes, including other cobras, which is how it earned the ‘king’ in its name. In India, the king cobra is typically found across northern, eastern and northeastern regions, including forested habitats and the Andaman Islands.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global body assessing species’ extinction risk, lists the king cobra as vulnerable to extinction in the wild. It population is declining, mainly because of habitat loss and forest degradation. In India, it is protected under Schedule II of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, which means hunting, capturing, or trading the species is a punishable offence.
In 2024, a landmark study, led by wildlife biologist P. Gowri Shankar, found that the king cobra is not a single species, as previously thought, but rather four genetically distinct species: Northern king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah); Sunda king cobra (Ophiophagus bungarus); Western Ghats king cobra (Ophiophagus kaalinga); Luzon king cobra (Ophiophagus salvatana). In an earlier Mongabay-India story published in 2024, Shankar said, “King cobras could potentially be five or six species. More research is needed.”
Read more about the king cobra in our stories on the newly described species, myths around king cobra venom, and the train-travelling cobras.
Banner image: Image by Tontan Travel via Flickr (CC BY-SA 4.0).