Difference between Asian Cobra And Python
Asian Cobra
People in Indian markets often gather to watch a man playing a flute. The man is a snake charmer. As he plays, a cobra rises out of a nearby basket. The snake sways back and forth. It seems to move to the rhythm of the music. But the snake is deaf. It doesn’t hear the music. It is just following the man’s swaying movements.
Asian cobras live in forests, grassy fields, and rice paddies. When the cobra is excited or scared, the skin on its neck expands into a hood. It raises the front third of its body to an upright position. And it hisses loudly. This behavior is supposed to frighten an enemy. If the enemy doesn’t leave, the cobra strikes. Using its fangs, it bites and injects a poison, or venom, into the victim.
The cobra also kills prey this way. Some Asian cobras can even spit venom by pointing their head upward and aiming for the eyes. One drop of cobra venom in the eye of a mouse can kill the mouse. A drop in the eye of a person can cause blindness.
Python
Python, any of a group of constricting snakes that includes the largest snakes in the Eastern Hemisphere. Pythons also are the longest land animals of any kind in the same region. The only larger and longer snakes are the anacondas of South America. Some species of pythons, including the reticulate python (Python reticulatus) and the Indian python (P. molurus), may exceed 30 feet (about 10 meters), although the longest one on record is a 28-foot (8.5-meter) reticulate python.
Pythons eat reptiles, birds, and mammals. The giants among them can swallow animals as large as leopards, pigs, and small antelopes. On extremely rare occasions they have attacked humans, including a 14-year-old Malay boy who was swallowed on an island in Indonesia.
The python typically seizes its prey with its sharp, backward-pointing teeth and quickly throws a few coils around the body of the victim. The snake tightens its coils until the prey dies of asphyxiation and then slowly swallows the victim whole. Pythons hunt at night, aided by eyes adapted for dim light. Heat-sensitive organs, located in the scales bordering the python’s mouth, enable it to locate warm-blooded prey in complete darkness.