The Kodaly household in Thrissur district woke one morning to a nightmare that no parent should face. Eight-year-old Aljo had been bitten in his sleep by a krait, one of India’s most neurotoxic snakes. His brother Anoj was bitten too. Both boys began frothing at the mouth before their father rushed them to a hospital in Chalakudy. Aljo did not survive. In Thiruvananthapuram’s Chirayinkeezhu, an eight-year-old named Dikshal suffered the same fate, bitten while asleep. In Kozhikode, a young man discovered he had been bitten only after spotting a snake on his bed.
These are not freak accidents. They are dispatches from a state in the grip of an ecological crisis it was never quite prepared for.
Kerala is reeling under one of its most punishing heatwaves in recent memory, and in its wake has come a sharp, alarming surge in snakebite incidents. Several incidents have been reported of children being bitten by snakes within house premises. On a single day, 23 people required ambulance assistance for bites alone, with many more reporting suspected encounters. From Alappuzha to Kozhikode, from Malappuram to the capital, the pattern is strikingly uniform: snakes are abandoning their natural habitats and moving into human spaces. The boundary between wildlife and home has quietly dissolved.
The Science Behind the Surge
The explanation lies in basic biology. Snakes are ectotherms, cold-blooded animals whose internal body temperature is governed by their environment. When external temperatures climb too high, snakes seek shade and cooler shelter, which increasingly means human homes and shaded compounds.
The data bearing this out is sobering. Researchers at Emory University found that the likelihood of a snakebite requiring emergency treatment rises by roughly 6% for every single degree Celsius increase in temperature. In practical terms: if the maximum temperature one day is 87°F and climbs to 96°F the next, the chance of a snakebite jumps by nearly 32%. The study, which tracked Georgia emergency rooms over seven years, confirmed what herpetologists have long suspected heat and snakebite risk move in lockstep.
International research reinforces this finding across climates and continents. An eight-year Israeli national study identified 1,234 snakebite cases and found that the risk was positively associated with temperatures exceeding 23°C. Crucially, heat waves elevated the frequency of snakebites in both cold and hot seasons alike. A separate study published in Science Advances found that snakebites in Costa Rica were unusually high during the hot phase of El Niño, suggesting that during periods of elevated temperature, increased snake activity brings reptiles and humans into more frequent and dangerous contact.
A review published in a primary healthcare journal found that climate change and its associated extreme weather events are expected to modify the snake-human-environment interface, altering the burden of snakebite in ways that health systems are not yet prepared for. One study from Sri Lanka, for instance, estimated a 31.3% increase in the incidence of snakebite attributable to climate-related changes.
A Breeding Season Made More Dangerous
Kerala’s current crisis is compounded by timing. This is also the breeding season for snakes, which independently increases the likelihood of human-snake encounters and makes April and May a period requiring extra caution, according to experts. The species most frequently involved, cobras, Russell’s vipers, and kraits, are among the most venomous on the subcontinent.
Ground temperatures have pushed snakes out of their burrows in search of cooler environments. Hideouts that attract them include overgrown vegetation, piles of firewood, coconut heaps, burrows, cracks, and shaded areas inside and around homes. The krait, which bites silently at night and whose neurotoxin can cause respiratory paralysis before dawn, is particularly deadly in this context.
India’s Broader Burden
The crisis in Kerala is not an isolated data point but part of a deeply troubling national pattern. Between 2000 and 2019, an estimated 1.2 million snakebite deaths occurred in India, averaging 58,000 annually, a figure that dwarfs global comparisons. The WHO classifies snakebite envenoming as the highest priority neglected tropical disease, one that disproportionately devastates rural and low-income communities.
As heatwaves grow more frequent and intense under climate change, those numbers are unlikely to shrink without deliberate intervention.
Response and What Comes Next
Hospitals across Kerala have moved quickly, ensuring anti-venom serum availability and rapid care. Most victims so far are stable. The Kerala Forest Department has more than 1,200 certified snake rescuers across the state. If a venomous snake is found near or inside a building, people are advised to contact them through the SARPA mobile application or district coordinators, the service is free and designed for quick response.
But reactive medicine can only go so far. The surge raises urgent structural questions: better waste and vegetation management around homes, stronger public awareness campaigns during peak heat months, and integration of snakebite preparedness into climate resilience planning.
Kerala’s heatwave will eventually break. But the lesson it is delivering is durable: climate change doesn’t just raise temperatures. It rearranges ecosystems, pushes wildlife into human territory, and opens new and unexpected fronts in public health. The snakes coming in from the heat are not an anomaly. They are a warning.
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