The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Centre for Herpetology, is about 30 km from the Chennai city. You can reach this place via help of Google Maps. You will see this place on your left hand side – while driving in the direction of Chennai to Pondicherry.
The board placed outside is small, so you might miss the place if you aren’t looking for it.
Strangely, the first thing you will notice once you enter Crocodile Bank is — a snake park! You will have to take a separate entry fee for Snake park – Rs 10 per head. It is worth it, take it.
Inside the Snake park, you will be explained about types of poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, first aid in case of snake bite, medicines available for various snake bites, and finally a live demo of extracting venom from snake. Overall, it will take about 15 minutes to complete this show.
Talkies Tip If you are parking your vehicle too far from Crocodile Bank, do not pay parking fee. The person will insist, but you can refuse (we parked about 100 meters away and we didn’t pay)
Below are pictures taken inside Snake park:
All snakes are stored inside a pot (with covered cloth) – see below photo.
All personnels are trained to deal with snakes, the live demo of venom extraction happens in the yellow stage seen below.
In picture above, the person in the left side of the picture explains everything about snakes. He is very knowledgable about snakes, so if you want more information about snakes, you can talk to him after the show.
The person is making the snake bite on a glass container (covered with cloth top). He held the snake head in a specific position so that it doesn’t bite him (he was not wearing any glove).
The extracted venom being shown to all participants – see the mild yellow liquid inside the container.
Most of the people give a tip to the personnels working here. See the money collected right infront of the center box. We offered a Rs 20 tip. Considering the fact that they are dealing with a dangerous species every minute, they should be paid well for their risky job.
Once you come out of the snake park, you will take about 30 minutes to see all types of crocodiles.
Caution – do not go near the fence of crocodile bank, maintain 1 feet distance for safety.
You will see two things strikingly coming out:
- There are too many crocodiles inside every enclosure. In a particular enclosure, we could count over 200 crocodiles.
- The water is dark green (scroll up and see the cover photo again). We thought it was a result of bad maintenance by Crocodile Bank. But, we were wrong. The water is kept green on purpose.
Reason for green colored water: It is because crocodiles prefer murky water. It makes them hide well (camouflage) to stalk and attack their prey.
Notice the green color face of the crocodile below (because of murky water)
The crocodile below had its mouth open for about 15 minutes. We actually stood so long to see when it will close it mouth (or change position), but the croc didn’t. It turned out to be a great photo pose for everyone around.
Cros here, there, everywhere.
This crocodile is the highlight. The BIGGEST of all. The photo below doesn’t do justice to the actual size of this crocodile. This croc is about 8 feet in length, and it can grow up 10 feet. You have to see it to believe it.
