If you're a herper, get all your herping buddies together, pop some popcorn, put this lower-than-B-grade movie on, and get ready for a laugh a minute. From a story about cobras playing dead to lure their prey to "African king cobras" and mambas that can put their fangs through someone's hand, every single thing they say about snakes is so wrong that it's howlingly funny.
It's less funny for non herpers when you have to explain the joke, but I'll try. Cobras do not play dead (Hemachatus and Heterodon do, Naja and Ophiophagus don't). King cobras are not from Africa. Adult black mambas (which are from Africa) have fangs from three to maybe six millimeters long. I'm estimating here, but I open a lot of mamba mouths for veterinary and research purposes. Elapid fangs are teeny weeny things.
More laughs to follow. Holding up a shed skin of this supposed rattlecobra, and the shed includes the rattle. The whole notion of a king cobra and an EDB breeding in the first place. But hey, they do say it's done by gene splicing, which gets around the fact that introducing a rattlesnake to a king cobra would not have good results for either snake. I guess they also spliced in the genes for being 30 feet long. What did they throw in the mix, a telephone pole? Our biggest king cobra weighs eleven kilos (under 25 lbs), is a bit shy of 15 feet in length, and is no thicker around than a man's arm. Doubling that would be an impressive snake, but not exactly a man-eater. King cobras are partially arboreal, especially as juveniles, and they are small and light-bodied by design. Toss Crotalus adamanteus in the mix via hypothetical gene splicing (VERY hypothetical indeed), and you'd get a heavier bodied snake. But still not what was depicted in the movie by a long shot.
The king rattlecobra does all kinds of stuff throughout that no snake could or would possibly do, increasing the laugh quotient considerably. The giggle factor is also helped along by the endless horse puckey being spewed by Pat Morita's character. And that laughable snake hook, and the ridiculous capture setup. Which is a bit of a shame, as "Haash" is an obvious homage to Bill Haast, right down to the injections of king cobra venom and the 167 bites.
Possibly the funniest faux pas of all is the notion that this mythical cross between a king cobra and a rattlesnake would be the most aggressive animal in the world. Or that any herpetologist would kill this animal once it was captured. Talk about a prize specimen! I'll gladly take a breeding pair for my collection. Alas, they exist only in the realm of imagination.
It's less funny for non herpers when you have to explain the joke, but I'll try. Cobras do not play dead (Hemachatus and Heterodon do, Naja and Ophiophagus don't). King cobras are not from Africa. Adult black mambas (which are from Africa) have fangs from three to maybe six millimeters long. I'm estimating here, but I open a lot of mamba mouths for veterinary and research purposes. Elapid fangs are teeny weeny things.
More laughs to follow. Holding up a shed skin of this supposed rattlecobra, and the shed includes the rattle. The whole notion of a king cobra and an EDB breeding in the first place. But hey, they do say it's done by gene splicing, which gets around the fact that introducing a rattlesnake to a king cobra would not have good results for either snake. I guess they also spliced in the genes for being 30 feet long. What did they throw in the mix, a telephone pole? Our biggest king cobra weighs eleven kilos (under 25 lbs), is a bit shy of 15 feet in length, and is no thicker around than a man's arm. Doubling that would be an impressive snake, but not exactly a man-eater. King cobras are partially arboreal, especially as juveniles, and they are small and light-bodied by design. Toss Crotalus adamanteus in the mix via hypothetical gene splicing (VERY hypothetical indeed), and you'd get a heavier bodied snake. But still not what was depicted in the movie by a long shot.
The king rattlecobra does all kinds of stuff throughout that no snake could or would possibly do, increasing the laugh quotient considerably. The giggle factor is also helped along by the endless horse puckey being spewed by Pat Morita's character. And that laughable snake hook, and the ridiculous capture setup. Which is a bit of a shame, as "Haash" is an obvious homage to Bill Haast, right down to the injections of king cobra venom and the 167 bites.
Possibly the funniest faux pas of all is the notion that this mythical cross between a king cobra and a rattlesnake would be the most aggressive animal in the world. Or that any herpetologist would kill this animal once it was captured. Talk about a prize specimen! I'll gladly take a breeding pair for my collection. Alas, they exist only in the realm of imagination.