A 69-year-old Buddhist monk named Wilatha has been raising pythons and poisonous cobras and cats at his ashram  Seikta Thukha TetOo in Yangon for the past five years. The public, government agencies and firefighters give him the snakes that they catch. Relying on donations of roughly $300 a month needed to feed the snakes, Wilatha only keeps them until he feels they are ready to go back to the wild.

He puts the snakes on his shoulders without any fear of doing so to prevent the killing of snakes and to prevent them from being smuggled into the black market for Chinese traditional remedies.

“Once people catch snakes, they will likely try to find a buyer,” said Wilatha, who also uses his saffron robe to clean the snake, one of the many he looks after and describes the snakes as his children.

“Generally, living in close proximity to people induces stress in snakes,” said Kalyar Platt, a member of the Wildlife Conservation Society, explaining the need to get them back into the forest as soon as possible.

The Southeast Asian country has become a global hub in the illegal wildlife trade with snakes often smuggled to neighbouring countries like China and Thailand, according to conservationists.

(Source: India Today)

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