In Thailand, scientists implant radio transmitters in king cobras to follow them. They find each one by triangulation, which means working out its position from the direction of its radio signal. In one study in northeast Thailand, they tracked seven king cobras for an average of about 650 days, and each snake was found at an average of about 524 unique locations over the course of that study. Those records showed that king cobra movements increased in forest and tended to decrease in agricultural areas. In farmland, the tracked snakes restricted their movements to patches of vegetation, often along irrigation canals.
Not every snake moved in the same way. Adult male king cobras tended to move more than the one tracked female and the two tracked juveniles. With so few females and young snakes in the study, the comparison is only a starting point, and more snakes would be needed to be sure. In one tracking study, adult males also left protected forest at the start of the hot season, which shows that a snake may not stay in the place that people have set aside for it. Roads were a separate puzzle. Researchers radio-tracked king cobras across a 15.3 km stretch of highway in northeast Thailand to see how the snakes cross roads. Scientists found 32 unintentional crossing structures, such as drainage culverts and bridges, along a highway in Thailand that may help king cobras cross it.
Venom is made in a venom gland behind the eye, and a small muscle pushes it through the hollow fangs. King cobra venom is a complex mixture of proteins encoded by several families of genes. Its make-up and the way it acts vary a great deal between snakes from different places, and neurotoxins in it act on the nervous system, especially on the signals for breathing. The venom serves a diet that is fairly specialized and mainly other snakes, but king cobras will also eat lizards, eggs and small mammals. They hunt by day and can travel long distances to track their prey over a long time.
Even the animal's name needs care. The king cobra is not a true cobra. It differs from the Naja cobras in several body features, and genetic work links it more closely to mambas. Theodore Cantor first described it in 1836, and the genus name Ophiophagus, proposed in 1864 by Günther, means snake-eater.
The king cobra is also the only snake that builds a nest for its eggs. Why the female stays by it is not known for sure.
As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List lists the king cobra as Vulnerable. Cutting down forests in Southeast Asia has destroyed the homes of many king cobras. They are also hunted for their skin, for food and for traditional medicine.
Words to know
- triangulation: finding by angles
- culverts: pipes under roads
- juveniles: young animals
- neurotoxins: nerve poisons
- genus: group of species
