So What If There's a Deadly Cobra on the Loose!

I agree Lunasparklez91. Even in the ultimate nightmare/worst case of being locked in a room with it... just 'not bothering it' makes a bite extremely unlikely.

As for the zookeepers hunting it down... that's no more dangerous than what they do normally, which includes cleaning the cages/enclosures, and feeding... two regular activities in which the keeper is routinely exposed to the opportunity to get bit.

At a whopping 20 inches in length, the snake's strike length is a whopping 6 and a half inches. Anyone wearing a good set of boots would have a very hard time getting bit, unless they did something stupid, like trying to reach down to grab it. The little thing's not much longer than your keyboard is from end to end.

Closing the Reptile House entirely, was probably more for making the public feel better, rather than any serious threat of the snake being in the PUBLIC area of the Reptile House.

For those who don't know how a 'hot room' (a non public area of a reptile exhibit building) is constructed... the chances a snake has of getting out of THERE, are as close to nil as you can get, short of a major disaster wrecking the building.

The other side of it, is that cobras in general, are very susceptible to stress... and a lot of people making racket while that snake is hidden off in some dark space it's not familiar with, probably won't do that snake's health any good. Cobras, especially juveniles, easily get sick if they're stressed.

Hopefully they'll locate the snake safely and get him back in an enclosure so they can continue their work of raising him.

I'm sure they've already started looking into the cause of his escape, and will be taking appropriate actions to reduce the chances even further that one of their slithery charges can escape their enclosure.

this is exaggeration. I work for the bronx zoo and to my knowledge the cobra likes to hide in closed in spaces. therefore whatever we think the cobra may hide in we will close it down. dont exaggerate saying that its slithering around waiting to kill people because its not as dangerous as you make it seem.

wuhhh!!?