A Cooperative to Save Lives and Livelihoods
On the campus of the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust, a unique scientific and conservation effort unfolds daily. This houses the Irula Snake Catchers' Industrial Cooperative Society, founded in 1978 by herpetologist Romulus Whitaker. The cooperative was created to provide a sustainable livelihood for the Irula people, a tribe with generations of unparalleled expertise in tracking and handling snakes. Their main source of income, selling snakeskins, was lost when India's Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 banned the practice. Whitaker recognized that the Irulas' specialized skills could be redirected to address a public health crisis: snakebite deaths, which claim an estimated 58,000 lives in India annually.
The cooperative, comprised of around 350 Irula members, is now the largest producer of snake venom in India. It operates under a government license, allowing members to capture a specific quota of snakes. This venture provides the raw material for the vast majority of antivenom produced in the country. The work of two of its members, Masi Sadaiyan and Vadivel Gopal, earned them the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian award, in 2023 for their contributions to social work and conservation.
The Big Four and the Milking Process
The Irula focus their efforts on the "Big Four," the four snake species responsible for the most snakebites in India. These are the spectacled cobra (Naja naja), the common krait (Bungarus caeruleus), the Russell's viper (Daboia russelii), and the saw-scaled viper (Echis carinatus). Irula trackers can identify a snake's species, size, and direction of travel from subtle tracks invisible to an untrained eye.
Once captured, a snake is brought to the cooperative, where it is kept for a maximum of 21 days. During this period, its venom is extracted up to four times. The process, often called "milking," involves the handler holding the snake's head and guiding its fangs to bite through a membrane stretched over a collection jar. The venom drips into the container. After the final extraction, each snake is marked on its belly scales to prevent immediate recapture and is then released back into its natural habitat. The collected venom is freeze-dried, a process called lyophilization, to be sold to pharmaceutical labs. These labs use the venom to immunize horses, whose blood plasma develops antibodies that become the basis for life-saving antivenom.