New app could aid snake research

Mumbai: An Indian app to track snake bites could help save lives and develop better anti-venom. The Big4 Mapper helps conservationists and herpetologists understand the distribution of snakes and incidents of snake bites reported in the country.

There are four types of snakes which are highly venomous i.e. Russell’s Viper, Common Cobra, Common Krait and Saw Scaled Viper which are responsible for more than 90 per cent snake bite-related deaths across the country. Surprisingly however, the government has no incident-related data that can help frame policies and develop better snake anti-venom to save the victims.

Taking cognisance of this to collate data at the ground level, the Big4 Mapper app has been developed to register each incident of snake bite involving these four types of snakes. The app, which is part of the “Indian Snake Bite Initiative,” is a joint project of the Madras Crocodile Bank, Global Snake Bite Initiat-ive and Indiansna-kes.org. It will help conservationists and herpetologists map out the distribution of snakes and incidents of snake bites across the country.

By assembling the incidents at the grass-root level, the app aims to help researchers and policymakers get a clearer picture of the situation and potentially save lives, said the brain behind the app, Jose Louies from the Wildlife Trust of India.

It has the potential to save lives, he added.