Snake Island: Where Venomous Snakes Are Literally Everywhere
by Pauli Poisuo
If the real world were a video game, Ilha da Queimada Grande would be that one highly buggy and left over area of the map that the developers really hope you don’t find. The sort of place that you probably wouldn’t survive or escape from, regardless of your skill or character’s level, because it straight-up does not follow the normal rules of the game.
At first glance, this real-and-definitely-not-a-video-game place seems like a perfectly lush and idyllic island off the shores of Brazil. You can even see all sorts of birds circling it, which only adds to the inviting atmosphere. But if you pay close attention, you may notice that more birds seem to land on the island than fly away from it.
And if you were to, say, try to land yourself, in order to explore this mystery, you wouldn't make it very far, because there would be snakes. Not because you chose the wrong spot, but because all the spots are full of snakes — an estimated one to five snakes per square meter, or, the size of a medium-small sandbox. Oh, and if you were to get bitten by one, you’d suddenly feel your calf ... melting?
Wait, what?
Congratulations! Like so many careless migratory birds, you’ve unwittingly landed on a piece of land that locals know as Snake Island, and life is about to get really, really unpleasant … and very, very brief. Ilha da Queimada Grande is home to a particularly nasty type of lancehead viper, which has evolved its venom into a hyper-potent, flesh-melting tool of complete and utter destruction. Thousands of these two-foot-long creatures live on the island, feasting on birds and biting every animal that looks bite-worthy.
Which very much includes humans.
That doesn’t mean humanity hasn’t tried to live in the place, though. Homo sapiens gotta Homo sapiens, and there’s no place we’re not prepared to at least try and populate. However, rarely have humans experienced such a crushing defeat as we have at the metaphorical hands of Snake Island’s slithering population. Fact and horror movie-worthy legend intertwine in tales about the fate of people who have attempted to stay on Ilha da Queimada Grande, including the stories about a lighthouse keeper family that had to flee into the forest after snakes invaded their dwelling en masse, and when they ran for their lives, other snakes bit them.
Not on their legs, either.
The snakes were in the trees.
Which means they were bitten in the face.
All of this sounds a bit too face-meltingly creepy to be real, but then again, so does an island-sized Raiders of the Lost Ark-style snake pit where every snake can kill you within an hour, and if local legend is anything to go by, leaves you lying dead in a massive wading pool of your own gore.
So, what kind of hardy resident would brave the many terrors of Snake Island? No one, that’s who. This isn’t that kind of survival story. In fact, the island is considered to be so utterly unsurvivable that the Brazilian government has strictly prohibited setting foot there without permission, presumably because the authorities have grown tired of the nightmares they get from constantly picking up leaky bodies from the shore.
Instead, this is a tale of the way humanity can take a look at an insurmountable obstacle (“We really want to go to Moon, but we can’t live there”) and find a creative solution (“Eh, let’s just go there to pick up some rocks for science, and plant a flag while we’re there”).
See, no one lives on Snake Island. However, people do visit all the time. The people who visit are scientists, and they’re slowly — and, you’d assume, extremely carefully — figuring out how to use the snakes’ super-strong venom’s medicinal properties to treat various cardiovascular problems. Which … thanks snakes, I guess?
