How is the forbidden island where live the 4000 most toxic snakes of the world, able to melt the skin to death?

The island is in front of the Brazilian coast but it does not have any heavenly beaches. In fact, his access is strictly forbidden without government authorization. And he has his reason to be: he lives a colony of some 4,000 most poisonous snakes in the world, able to melt the skin of anyone who is attacked by them.

The Ilha de Queimada large, also known as Snake Island, is located 33 kilometers from the coast of São Paulo, on the Atlantic Ocean. On its coast, a sign warns sailors that it is forbidden to disembark there.

The island is the only place in the world where Bothrops insularis, a yellowish brown snake measuring up to 70 centimeters and estimated to be up to one specimen per square meter on the island, according to a Discovery Channel documentary.

Since sea level has risen about 11,000 years ago and cut off the island 's contact with the mainland, snakes have developed in a different way: five times more toxic than their parents on the continent. They hunt and eat birds, not the natives of the island, because they already know how to flee their attacks, but larger migratory birds. It is then that to kill them, their poison has become more powerful.

"A sting of these snakes would cause a painful death. You would die screaming", a biologist warned an Australian television crew that had recently ventured to the cliff with a group of scientists after obtaining the necessary permissions.

The fishermen of the area spread the legends of a whole family who died during the landing on the island and of whom they were the Pirates those who filled the place of snakes to protect a treasure that they have hidden there.

Anyway, the scientists went there with Australian television to shoot the venom of these snakes and develop a better antivenom serum to survive a sting.

Ironically, these snakes also play a crucial role in saving lives. 40 years ago, from her poison came the captopril, a drug widely used today to combat blood pressure problems.

The only ones who enter the island, apart from authorized scientific expeditions, are poachers, who risk their lives and can charge up to 30 thousand dollars to obtain a copy of Bothrops insularis.