FAQ. How to access your online snake course
We have three very popular online snake courses; Beginners’ Guide to Snake Identification, Advanced Snake Identification and Snake Awareness and First Aid for Snakebite.
We have three very popular online snake courses; Beginners’ Guide to Snake Identification, Advanced Snake Identification and Snake Awareness and First Aid for Snakebite.
Identifying snakes can be rather difficult as they vary in colour. The Cape Cobra varies dramatically in colour, often from the same area. Juveniles are brownish yellow with a darker broad throat band but sometimes an orange brown colour while adults vary from near black to dark brown, medium brown, light brown, yellow or a golden orange colour and most of these variations may have darker or lighter speckles. Certain colours may be dominant in some areas (golden yellow individuals from the Kalahari) but that may also vary.
We have a large presence on social media with well over 500 000 followers over our various pages. Our Facebook group Snakes of Southern Africa is one of the largest and best run wildlife pages in Africa, and members submit dozens of snake pictures daily, asking for assistance with identification.
In many of our snake species there is a great deal of colour variation, making identification quite difficult. The Boomslang, Cape Cobra and Mole Snake come to mind.
Gauteng has a large diversity of snakes, which are naturally found from the grass and vlei lands around Johannesburg to the bushveld areas around Pretoria. Because the province is largely built up, with both residential and industrial buildings, many of the snakes encountered are either in the house, garden, or in business premises.
Although they have been around for many years, not a lot is known about snake gaiters in Africa. Snake gaiters are sometimes referred to as snake chaps, snake kammaste, snake putties or simply snakebite leg protection.
When snakes grow, they get too large for their skins and need to slough the old skin. The process of shedding the old skin is known as ecdysis.
All corporate companies are responsible for the health and safety of their employees whilst on-site. For sites situated in areas where staff are exposed to snake encounters, it is imperative that staff are given correct training in snake awareness, and what to do in the case of snake encounters on-site. For remote sites, having a few trained snake handlers on each shift can be an invaluable asset.
One of the biggest challenges we face in Africa is the availability of antivenom and snakebite deaths has been recognised by the World Health Organisation as a neglected tropical disease. Up to 20,000 fatalities are reported in Africa every year.
These small spiders are common in gardens and around human settlements and are also often encountered when out hiking. These spiders make messy webs at night between vegetation, often taking down their web in the early morning and rebuilding them again at night.