Superstitions fuel trafficking of India’s red sand boa

In India, superstitions and myths have fueled a rampant illegal trade in the red sand boa, a docile, nonvenomous snake, reports Shatabdi Chakrabarti in a video for Mongabay India.

The red sand boa (Eryx johnii), as its name suggests, is a thick reddish snake that burrows in loose mud and sand. It’s found in dry, sandy and rocky landscapes, often near farms, and it mostly eats rats, mice and lizards. Despite protection under the highest Indian wildlife laws, it’s one of the most trafficked species in the country.

The red sand boa is known in Hindi as do muha, meaning “double-headed,” because its tail resembles its head. The snake uses this deception as both a defense strategy and to hunt prey: coiled in a ball, it places its tail on top, which tricks a predator into attacking its tail instead of the head, or fools a mouse trying to escape its “head.”

But the name do muha has spawned various “bizarre” stories, Chakrabarti says.

“One of the important ones is that this snake can lead people to hidden treasures, or the fact that if you keep this snake in your house, you will actually certainly become rich,” reptile expert Nirmal Kulkarni tells Chakrabarti.

Another common superstition is that the snake attracts wealth based on its weight: the heavier the snake, the more treasure it supposedly will attract, Kulkarni says. That leads some people to try to increase a snake’s weight by making it swallow large tubes or balls of lead, which harms the snake and can be fatal, he adds.

Rajesh Chahal, a wildlife inspector with the forest department in the northern state of Haryana, says there’s no truth to any of these stories. “This is an organized crime,” he says.

Kulkarni co-authored a 2023 report that documented 172 media reports of illegal red sand boa trades across 18 states in India from 2016-2021.

Much of the red sand boa’s trade is conducted online, through YouTube and chat platforms including WhatsApp. When Chakrabarti anonymously contacts a seller advertising these snakes on YouTube, she’s told she can easily carry the snake from the western state of Maharashtra to India’s capital, Delhi, by car or train. “You can take it without any worry. And you are a woman, so no one will anyway stop your vehicle,” the seller adds.

Chahal tells Mongabay India the illegal trade in these snakes isn’t isolated to people from any one region or just among uneducated people who believe the superstitions. “We find more educated people and well-established folk who have decent amount of money, involved in this,” he adds.

Between the illegal trade and habitat loss, the snake’s population is dropping in areas where it used to be common, local wildlife experts warn.

Watch the full video: “Why is this snake one of the most trafficked species in the world?”

Banner image of a red sand boa by Sagar khunte via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).