Snakes Alive! Bangkok removed more than 4,500 pythons from homes last year

By Coconuts Bangkok

May 23, 2018 | 5:55pm Bangkok time

While we’ve had about a dozen reports of snakes emerging from people’s toilets over the past few years, new statistics from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) suggest that Bangkokians find snakes in and around their homes more than we’d ever managed.

The city caught a whopping 4,612 snakes from people’s homes in 2017, DNP revealed on the weekend. And in case you’re thinking “well, maybe they were small ones” … no. A full 4,519 of the total were pythons.

The areas of the city where officials caught the most snakes were Yannawa (786 snakes), Hua Mark (627), and Bang Khunnon (608), Thairath reported.

So why are snakes so comfortable in our homes? Supakorn Pathumrattanakarn, a DNP wildlife expert, said the answer is pretty simple. Snakes live in residential areas because they’re there to eat mouses, and Bangkok’s poor garbage management means there are plenty of mice around to eat thrown-away food in the trash. End result? More snakes.

“Where there are rats, there are snakes,” he said, adding he believes there to be more than one million rats in Bangkok. Go ahead and let that sink in for a second.

Supakorn said that, through last month, the city had caught 913 snakes in 2018.

See the related serpent sagas below and check out this video we made with a snake expert explaining the toilet snake phenomenon: