The Siam Serpentarium

The Siam Serpentarium is Asia's first entertainment museum dedicated entirely to snakes. We were in the area after stopping by at the Suvarnabhumi Airport Museum, and decided to visit the serpentarium, somewhere I had wanted to see for several years.

Many years ago, when I first moved to Thailand, my old boss Geoffrey took me to the Bangkok Snake Farm, a Thai Red Cross museum and clinic. There, we watched the snake show and even got to meet one of the center's old, sweet, and very docile pythons.

The Blog of Michael Desrosiers: The Snake Farm

We had a quick lunch at the museum's cafe, which also housed several snakes, like this colorful milk snake.

And this little guy who was acting shy and who I thought was actually pretty cute for a snake.

After lunch, we went to visit the museum itself. The first section of the museum was dedicated to the lifecycle and biology of snakes. Next, we got to see some of the snakes themselves.

One snake which really intrigued me was the beautiful albino cobra.

Cobras have always creeped me out. They just look evil. I don't know if it's the hood, the way they move, or just the fact that I know that they are aggressive, highly venomous, and are capable of spitting their venom into an enemy's eyes to blind it. This one, being albino, was very rare. It was cool to see, but I still prefer looking at non-venomous snakes!

The cobra wasn't the only albino snake at the Serpentarium! There was also a huge and super cool albino python with a really stunning white and gold pattern.

My favorite snake was the Oriental Rat Snake, who was super curious and social and who kept raising himself up to look at the visitors.

oriental rat snake

The most beautiful snake that I saw was the white-lipped python, a stunningly iridescent copper, gold, and blue nonvenomous snake endemic to the lowlands of New Guinea. This snake is a popular pet, and I have to admit that if I were ever to adopt a snake of my own, it would be high on my list.

white-lipped python

Twice every day, the Serpentarium hosts a snake show, and we were lucky enough to have arrived at just the right time to catch the evening performance. A snake handler introduced the snakes, including two cobras. It really stressed me out as he picked them up and held them and even kissed them on the head.

Afterwards, they gave a demonstration on how snake venom is milked to create antivenin.

The final exhibition was about antivenin and the process of its production.

It's actually a rather archaic and somewhat barbaric process which involves injecting a horse, a mammal large enough to be able to naturally survive a snakebite, with deadly venom, then extracting and processing the antibodies from the horse's blood to inject into a bite victim to give them some small immunity with the hopes that they will survive. It sounds crazy, but that's actually the only way that we know of making antivenin.

And here's a fun fact (one of my all-time favorite etymological fun facts): Most people say anti-venom, but the correct English word is actually antivenin! It comes from the French word venin (meaning “venom”), as the substance was discovered by French scientist Albert Calmette (1863-1933).