Skeptoid #913- Surviving Brazil’s Snake Island

Its proper name is Ilha da Queimada Grande, Island of the Great Forest Fire — a name acquired long ago when people once tried to burn its jungles to clear land for a banana plantation. But few call it by its official name. To most, it’s simply Snake Island, a small rocky isle about 33 km off the coast of Brazil, not far from São Paulo. It is a very small island — only 43 hectares in size (a hectare being a square 100 meters on each side) — equal to 106 acres in all. Early estimates of snake density, 1 per square meter. Let’s have a listen to a few reports to see just what it’s like there. Here’s a snippet from an article in Smithsonian Magazine titled “This Terrifying Brazilian Island Has the Highest Concentration of Venomous Snakes Anywhere in the World“: These vipers’ venom can kill a person in under an hour, and numerous local legends tell of the horrible fates that awaited those who wandered onto the shores of “Snake Island.“ Rumor has it a hapless fisherman landed onto the island in search of bananas — only to be discovered days later in his boat, dead in a pool of blood, with snake bites on his body. From 1909 to the 1920s, a few people did live on the island, in order to run its lighthouse. But according to another local tale, the last lighthouse keeper, along with his entire family, died when a cadre of snakes slithered into his home through the windows. Here’s from some guy’s YouTube short: I illegally went to Snake Island in Brazil, the second most dangerous island in the world. It’s completely uninhabited. The only thing that’s there is this poisonous snake called the golden lancehead viper. And if it bites you, you basically die of blood loss, 100% mortality rate. They’re only native to this island. There’s one snake per square meter, or one snake per one and a half square foot. I went to the island in a full suit of medieval armor. In a VICE online documentary, several local Brazilian fishermen were interviewed and told these stories (according to the subtitles): I’ve heard about it for years, since my father’s time. People are afraid. They will not set foot there. These folks on a boat saw a bunch of bananas and got onto the island to cut them. But both of them died. In my mind, I believe they were introduced by pirates to protect the gold galleons. So I believe there’s gold there. How else would these snakes appear there? Snakes that don’t belong to any continent?