He was apparently trying to heal his son with the snake wine
A man has reportedly been bitten by a snake which “came back to life” after he opened the bottle of snake wine it was in.
The man, from Heilongjiang, mainland China, purchased three venomous snakes which he placed in a jar of alcohol. Then, a year later, he unsealed the flask to use the wine to treat his son’s chronic illness.
He had tried a number of other treatments that had proved unsuccessful, The China Times reports.
But when he opened the wine, one of the snakes was apparently still alive, and attacked the man with a venomous bite.
After going to hospital, he survived the attack.
The drink is a traditional Chinese liquor, made by putting a venomous snake inside a jar of rice wine, usually while the reptile is still alive. The ‘wine’ is then left to marinate for several months.
It is believed that snake wine has medicinal properties, but there is no scientific evidence to back this up (Theo Klein/Getty)It is widely believed that the drink has beneficial properties such as acting as an anti-inflammatory and painkiller. However scientists have found no evidence to support these claims, with the practice being labelled as cruel and inhumane.
Similar cases as this one have been known to happen before. Some suggested that because snakes are a cold-blooded animal, they are able to enter a dormant state in low oxygen environments, suppressing their metabolic rate.
It has also been suggested that the flask was not sealed properly, allowing some air to enter.
But one expert told Newsweek that this would not help the snake survive for a year in the liquid and that “no snake can survive submerged in any kind of liquid in a bottle for more than an hour or so as a maximum.”
Wolfgang Wüster, a reader in zoology and herpetology at Bangor University in Wales, also added that snakes have no medicinal properties.
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