Deep within the jungles of southern India,
there lives a legendary king
respected and feared by all.
He is swift and strong and deadly.
He is the largest venomous snake in the world.
But until now his life has been a mystery.
This is the story of a monarch and his remarkable travels
through a fragile kingdom.
It is early on a cool morning
when the king of snakes embarks on a journey.
His is an ancient forest alive with creatures great and small.
Like the king cobra himself
many hover precariously close to extinction.
But on this morning
the jungle pulses with the sounds of insects and birds.
A great Indian hornbill delicately feeds his family
hidden in their nest below.
Through this jungle book world the king roams great distances.
Though his movements are quiet those around always take notice
for crossing the king cobra's path could cost them their lives.
Despite the uproar his presence causes his world is mostly silent.
He only hears the deepest of rumblings
He has picked up the heavy footfalls of a nearby elephant.
Even the mighty pachyderm steers clear of this serpent,
for just one bite may bring death.
But the king would strike such a beast only in self-defense,
for he feeds solely on snakes.
Still, the langurs are cautious.
Today, the king is not interested even in snakes.
He is searching for something else, something very important.
His eyesight is better than most serpents'
but he sees without color and only registers objects when they move.
He smells the air with his tongue.
So acute is this sense, he can use it to find water.
And that's exactly what he's looking for.
Today, water is critical for the king is about to shed his skin.
He needs extra fluid to help separate his old coat from his new.
It is an uncomfortable time for the king cobra,
a new skin is developing beneath his outer scales.
He must find a place to hide until it is time to shed.
The king is unaccustomed to his fragile condition.
It is an uncertain time.
At last he discovers a burrow.
And none of the forest's creatures wants to share quarters with the king.
For the next ten days, he will stay here.
Irritable and tense, he's sensitive to any movement nearby.
Even the harmless wanderings of a turtle unsettle the king.
For his eyes have become cloudy from a secretion
which helps separate his skins.
Half blind and vulnerable, he is always ready to strike.
At last his eyes begin to clear
a sign his new skin has finished growing.
The king is back but must still shed his old scales.
His spent skin is tight and itchy.
As he scrapes and rubs to relieve the discomfort,
his outer scales begin to peel.
It is a remarkable transformation
even his fangs, teeth, and the tips of his tongue
will be replaced again and again during the course of his life.
When the skin over his eyes lifts away he is given new windows
through which to view his world.
At 12 feet long and still growing,
the snake must endure shedding four or five times a year.
His discarded skin
makes a perfect meal for the smaller creatures of his realm.
In this kingdom, nothing is wasted.
After ten days without eating, the king is hungry.
A tree offers a good vantage point for spotting prey.
For his size, the king cobra is an agile climber.
Now he waits and watches.
A movement in the tree reveals another hungry creature... a young hornbill.
Its father has spotted something.
The king cobra watches the hunt unfold
A vine snake ribbons across a nearby branch.
Much smaller than the cobra,
this nimble hunter is no match for the hornbill.
The little snake looks as fierce as he can.
But it is only a brave display.
His venom is mild.
The young hornbill gets the prize.
And the king will wait for bigger meals.
Below on the forest floor a rat snake is on the hunt.
It is one of India's largest non-venomous snakes.
Quick and voracious, it will take any small mammal.
From his perch the king spots the movement below.
It is just what he's been waiting for.
Silently, the king cobra joins in the hunt.
The rat snake follows a scent.
Its sensitive tongue has led it to prey.
The king cobra is on their trail.
As the rat snake prepares to attack, the king closes in.
In a flash, the rat escapes.
And now, the hunter becomes the hunted
Against the hooded death, even a seven-foot snake hasn't a chance.
The rat snake puffs up its throat and lowers its tongue in threat,
but it is a futile gesture.
One strike delivers venom and a crushing grip.
The rat snake returns the attack
but it's already doomed.
Within minutes the giant cobra's venom takes effect, paralyzing the prey.
The heart stops pumping, the lungs stop breathing,
and the victim suffocates.
The king cobra can easily devour this large snake.
His backward-facing teeth help guide the victim down his throat.
Digestion has already begun,
for the king's venom helps dissolve the rat snake from the inside out.
Still, the king cobra will linger over this meal.
And for the days it takes to absorb his prey,
he'll have no need to hunt.
But yet the king is restless.
It is now the dry season the time to find a mate.
A new, intoxicating scent fills the air.
Some of the rain forest's trees
have dropped their leaves and begun to fruit.
It is a joyous season for langurs.
Across the forest the jackfruits are ripening.
Their sweet, pungent odor beckons.
It's an irresistible lure to creatures both small
and great
To reach the succulent flesh within the 20-pound fruit,
the prickly skin must first be peeled.
It's a messy job for even the most adept of elephants.
She leaves a veritable banquet in her wake.
This is a season when king cobras roam widely through the forest.
But today the king's subjects are distracted by the fruit.
They take only passing notice of his presence.
The king still seeks a mate.
And it's in this fruiting season that he's most likely to find one.
But it's not a female he encounters.
It's a rival... a formidable male.
A potent threat, he must be driven away.
Each is capable of killing the other with a single bite.
A strange duel begins
an encounter rarely witnessed and never before filmed.
Rather than a fight to the death,
the battle has evolved into a ritualized dance.
To win, one snake must force the other's head to the ground.
At last, there is a victor.
It's the intruder.
The king has been dethroned.
Driven from his domain, he must seek another.
But the rain forests of southern India are a finite land.
As people press in,
less and less remains for the king cobra.
Our king has no choice but to leave the jungle.
Fortunately for the king cobra... water is no barrier.
He is a gifted swimmer.
But what lies ahead for the king?
As the forest is cleared, its creatures more and more
frequently cross the border into a strange new realm...
the realm of civilization.
But surprisingly,
a tea plantation is a welcome sight to the exiled king.
Here there is thick vegetation and an abundance of rat snakes.
But this is no haven.
For when king cobras and people cross paths
there is bound to be trouble.
Just one glimpse of the legendary king can cause panic
and shut down a plantation for weeks.
This cultivated land is not as rich as the king cobra's old domain,
but still, he makes himself at home here.
Yet he must be evicted if work is to resume at the plantation.
And even the king is no match for humans who are determined and armed.
Fortunately for the king,
a special sort of hunter has been called in.
His weapons are simply a stick and a sack
to the amazement of his audience.
In this part of India, people know to call Rom Whitaker
whenever a king cobra is on the loose.
An American expatriate raised in India
Whitaker has studied these snakes for over 20 years.
I'll leave the bag here.
You take that path. Okay.
Careful, huh? Yeah.
I've been fascinated with king cobras all my life.
Anyone who likes snakes knows that this is the super snake,
the snake of all snakes.
As I get to know it better, it gets more and more amazing.
Finding a king cobra in a tea estate isn't very easy.
I spent 20 days tracking one down.
The bushes here are so thick that I have to get down on my hands
and knees to see where the snake's gone.
It's a dangerous proposition even for Whitaker.
After several snakebites, he is now allergic to antivenin.
The next bite could kill him.
He's coming.
I'm moving up ahead.
Okay.
With the serpent cornered,
the challenge now is to complete the capture without a terrible accident.
The king cobra too is fragile.
The stick could easily hurt him.
He's big, he's really big.
Back, back, back, back, back, behind, behind, behind.
I don't want to pull, man.
I've been catching king cobras for quite a few years.
And I've evolved a system which is quite gentle to the snake.
When the serpent is trapped, he tries to escape,
lunging toward what appears to be a dark hole.
He's gonna go in. He's gonna go in.
Open the bag.
Okay, good. Watch it,
he's gonna go in. He's gonna go in.
Watch out. Okay, twist, man.
This is one hell of a snake.
Whitaker is not just a hunter.
He's a leading expert on king cobras
and each capture is a precious chance to learn more
about this elusive species.
To take detailed notes on the snake
Whitaker has to remove him from the bag,
which is just as dangerous as getting him in.
But he must be removed to obtain a sample of his venom.
The amount of venom this serpent can inject through his fangs is astounding
one bite can deliver enough to kill 100 people.
The procedure doesn't harm the snake.
His venom is simply saliva with a deadly twist.
Good venom sample.
Okay, shall we release him? Yeah.
The king cobra can produce an unlimited supply.
One, two, three.
Few people are actually bitten by king cobras,
for they are reclusive serpents whose home is deep in the forest.
And this is where Whitaker makes his release
far from tea estates and people.
After his encounter with the human race,
the king cobra seeks refuge.
A patchwork of woods and open grassland,
this new home has all he needs shelter and food.
But there will also be other king cobras.
And now he is the newcomer.
Cautiously, he slides through the undergrowth.
He senses something up ahead a snake.
Is it food?
His tongue picks up a telltale scent.
It's another king cobra, but this time a female.
The king may have found his queen.
She stands on guard.
She may be ready to mate, but her bite is deadly.
So he moves slowly.
He tries to entice her.
But his gentle overtures are rebuffed.
Abandoning the subtle approach, he becomes bolder.
Perhaps this will excite her.
With the female slow to respond, the king's advances turn more urgent.
Finally, she begins to show interest sliding her long,
sinuous body against his.
At last, with their tails entwined they mate.
It's a lengthy affair
this limbless embrace may last as long as three hours.
When the male withdraws his crimson penis,
the union is over.
The two will go their separate ways,
but the king has passed on his legacy.
It is April, the season of serpentine unions and approaching rains.
Clouds signal a difficult time ahead.
With eggs developing inside her,
the female cobra needs to feed more frequently now.
In only 40 days, she'll lay her clutch,
just before the monsoon breaks.
Rising humidity brings forth a new generation of creatures.
A hammerhead slug feels its way across the earth.
The female seems to be moving more slowly as her eggs continue to grow.
And her journey will become more uncomfortable yet...
for the moisture has triggered sinister stirrings on the forest floor.
Leeches... the bloodsuckers of the rain forest come forth by the thousands.
For the past six months, they have been dormant in the soil.
Now they are hungry for blood any blood.
From the moment they emerge,
leeches hone in on virtually any animal that moves.
Once aboard the serpent,
they make for the vulnerable gaps between her scales.
At this time of year,
hardly an animal in the jungle is spared this plague.
As daylight fades, there is at least some comfort.
With twilight, the jungle becomes cooler.
In the brief dusk of the tropics,
one world prepares to sleep while another awakens.
A multitude of tiny legs carries a millipede through the darkness.
Beneath a jackfruit tree,
a porcupine makes an evening meal of fallen fruit.
On this moonlit night,
the female king cobra searches for a place to lay her eggs.
Their survival depends on her choice.
Temperature and humidity must be just right if the eggs are to hatch.
She sizes up a stand of bamboo.
Her rustling startles the porcupine.
Then something remarkable happens.
She begins to gather bamboo leaves with great sweeps of her body.
She starts to build a nest.
It is an extraordinary feat for a limbless animal to build a nest,
and the female king cobra is the only snake that does so.
It is an exhausting task.
As she toils, a slender loris in the branches above begins his slow,
nocturnal search for food.
He takes only passing notice of the stirrings below.
The king cobra will continue to gather leaves for hours
before she is ready to lay.
The loris is suddenly more attentive the rustling below has stopped.
It is well after midnight and the cobra is laying her eggs.
The eggs will slowly whiten as their coating dries.
It will take the mother much of the night to layher clutch of leathery eggs
Meanwhile, her upstairs neighbor has spotted a sleeping lizard.
It's a lucky night for the loris.
With 18 eggs laid,
the mother cobra buries them beneath another layer of leaves.
Here she will rest, as the Indian sun warms the forest again.
The cobra's maternal duties are far from over.
For the next two months,
she will guard her nest from predators like the mongoose.
This plucky little hunter will try his luck with anything that looks edible.
In a scene from Kipling's Jungle Book
it is the cobra against the infamous mongoose.
The mongoose is a notorious egg thief
and one of the few creatures willing to challenge a king cobra head on.
The persistent little mongoose angers the mother cobra.
Towering three feet above him she has no need to strike.
She has made her message quite clear.
On this humid, summer day, others in the forest search for nests.
Finding king cobra nests in the wild is really difficult.
So I've been offering rewards.
But still, in 20 years, I've seen only four.
People think that a king cobra on her nest is the most
dangerous creature on earth.
But what surprises me is that they're actually shy and retiring.
All I have to do is gently prod the nest and off she goes.
But I know she'll stick around just to see what's going on.
This is a great chance for me to learn more about this wonderful reptile.
Let's checkout the condition of these eggs.
Even with the mother guarding them some of the eggs won't survive.
Ah, here's a rotten one.
In this nest there are 18 eggs and a few of them will never hatch.
God, there are leeches here too.
I'll chuck the rotten one away.
You better get them off your hands before they start...
Ah, they've never bothered me.
Thirty point nine.
Not bad. Pretty constant.
Let's close up.
When the researchers have finished their task,
they replace the eggs and rebuild the mother's carefully constructed nest.
Only after they've gone will the mother return.
Then she will resume her watch for another month.
A protective mother king cobra is just one of many challenges
for scientists working in the rain forest.
I've been wandering in these forests for decades,
and although we do keep an eye open for elephants,
I've never been attacked by anything except the little creatures
mites, ticks, leeches.
Look at these suckers.
Well, as gory as it looks, it really doesn't hurt very much.
Oh, that's a fat one.
Look at that.
The fish are eating them.
Pulling them off does feel a bit weird
And of course, you go on bleeding for hours.
But they don't really seem to do you any harm.
Soon leeches will be the least of anyone's worries
for it is July and at last the monsoon arrives in earnest.
Sweeping in from the Indian ocean,
it will bring as much as 30 feet of rain in a single season.
The lashing rain will test the king cobra's nest.
The deluge may last for weeks.
Though the nest is battered it served its purpose
the female and her eggs have weathered the storm.
After two months the mother's long vigil is over.
Instinct tells her to abandon the nest before her infants emerge
for she is a snake-eater by nature.
Within the nest, her eggs are stirring with life.
Their mother glides off to hunt her first meal in months.
Her babies will now have to fend for themselves.
With a tiny sharp tooth the first one tears open its shell.
One by one the others follow.
Soon the nest glistens with a dozen miniature king cobras
complete with venom and tiny fangs.
For the first 24 hours
the hatchlings remain near their eggs as they absorb their nutritious yolks
and take in the world for the first time.
At last they start to explore their nest.
The pencil-thin babies are just 15 inches long,
but already they act like their parents.
Quick to respond to movement they spar with each other.
Then, instinctively most leave the nest and climb into
the bamboo above for safety.
But one youngster lingers below.
Instead of leaving the dangerous forest floor,
this hatchling is drawn to the water for a drink.
It will be a costly mistake.
A crocodile is watching.
Beneath the other more cautious hatchlings,
the mongoose returns to the abandoned nest.
He's rummaging for leftovers.
He devours a king cobra that never hatched.
In just a week, one of the hatchlings sheds his skin for the first time.
He will shed every month for his first year,
since baby king cobras grow quickly.
Now the hungry hatchling must search for his first kill.
He spots his prey
a little olive water snake.
At this age, the baby king cobra can barely make enough venom
to kill a tiny creature like this.
But his hunting form is already impeccable.
He spreads his ribs and makes a perfect little hood.
With his first successful kill,
the little cobra is well on his way to becoming the next king.
In ten years, he may grow to 15 feet.
But only with luck.
For the forests of southern India are shrinking.
In such a changing world the hatchling's prospects are unsure.
What will become of the little king?
Will he be banished to the realm of legends,
remembered only in a storybook?
For today, at least,
this mighty monarch rules the fragile forest.
For he is king.