With I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! back on our screens, you might have found a new fear being unlocked or perhaps an old one being reignited.
I mean, living in the UK, we don’t exactly come across giant huntsman spiders to be scared of on every corner. And we certainly don’t find ourselves dealing with whopper snacks to win some food in a Bushtucker Trial.
So, if you’ve recently started having fresh nightmares about the slithering things wrapping themselves around your body, there’s something you might want to avoid.
That’s because if you drop a Google Maps pin on Snake Island while you’re browsing random destinations, a rather frightening thing happens.
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Oh yeah, that’s a real place said to be home to around 4,000 of the world’s deadliest snakes. And with an area of just 106 acres, that works out at between three and five of the things per square metre.
That's a lotta snakes.
Critically endangered golden lancehead vipers also only live on Ilha da Queimada Grande, hence its not so friendly Snake Island nickname.
While the species primarily scrans on birds, their potent venom can be lethal to us humans, with the possibility to kill us in just an hour.
So, it’s hardly a disappointment that people aren’t allowed to visit the place for the sake of both them and the creatures – because who wants their flesh melted by a snake?
But the one way you can kind of pay a visit is of course by playing about on Google Maps.
Go on, admit it, you’re guilty of killing some time or procrastinating a bit by dropping pins on random places and having a wander around.
And if you drop a pin on Snake Island you might end up jumping at your screen, so maybe save it for a work from home procrastination session rather than in the office.
If you’ve done it, you’ve got to admit it can be a bit of a shock initially but you’d really have to be absolutely terrified of snakes to be scared just looking at it.
You’ve got to laugh really. Total respect to the person editing a giant image of a snake onto a road in the middle of the island.
And it looks like they're pros at this point, judging by their YouTube channel, as they've got plenty of videos like this.
How did they do it, you may be asking? Well, Google Maps has a nifty feature that allows you to upload 360 degree images with Street View Studio.
The real snakes, however, ended up on Quiemada Grande thousands of years ago following the end of the last ice age, as the rising sea levels disconnected the island from Brazil’s mainland.
Topics: Environment, Animals, Google
Jess Battison