Hitchhiking Snakes: Why King Cobras are “Taking the Train” in Goa
The Apex Hitchhiker: Why King Cobras are Riding India’s Rails In a bizarre overlap of infrastructure and wildlife, new research suggests that King Cobras (Ophiophagus kaalinga) in Western India may be inadvertently using the railway network as a high-speed transit system. A study published in Biotropica on January 26, 2026, has identified a startling pattern of these apex predators appearing in “ecologically improbable” locations near railway stations and corridors in Goa. Led by Indian scientist Dikansh Parmar and an international team from Germany and the USA, the study mapped 47 king cobra localities across Goa between 2002 and 2024. While
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