Would you go on vacation in a magnificent tropical island, uninhabited, a true earthly paradise, if they told you that teeming with very poisonous snakes? Imagine no, so you can eliminate the island of Queimada Grande from the list of your possible holiday destinations: also known as the “island of snakes”, it hosts some of the most poisonous reptiles in the worldincluding the golden lance iron, which in addition to being lethal It is also one step away from extinction. That’s why the entrance to Queimada Grande It is prohibited to humans: to protect them, but also the inhabitants of the island.
The islet of snakes. Despite the appellation, Queimada Grande is actually tiny: it has a surface of just 430,000 m2 (meters, not kilometers!), Many of whom have very steep and inaccessible cliffs. The local fauna is all concentrated in the dense forest that covers the island, which has a surface of just 255,000 m2.
The main protagonist of these small ecosystem It is the aforementioned golden Lancia iron (Bothrops Insularis), relative of moccasins and snapper snakes, a predator who produces a hemotoxic poisonwhich affects the circulatory system causing internal bleeding and blood clots in a few minutes. On Queimada Grande live between 2,000 and 4,000 specimens of these species – which is not present any other part of the world – with a population density equal to approximately 5 snakes per square meter: this makes the island of snakes a fundamental sanctuary for the conservation of this species.
The Sanctuary of the snakes. The gilded Lancia iron has lived on Queimada Grande for 11,000 years, during which he evolved an even more powerful poison than that of his “continental” relatives, that the allows you to go hunting for birdshis favorite prey (as well as substantially the only ones on the island).
For all these reasons, access to the island (which also hosts other species of snakes, some of which are even not poisonous) is strictly prohibited, its controlled coasts directly by the Brazilian navy, which prevents anyone from setting foot on Queimada Grande – for their own safety, but also for that of animals who populate the island of snakes.
