For those of you in the United States, check out NG channel this Saturday at 7PM and watch King Cobras from the comfort and safety of your television screens! We spent nearly a year documenting the natural history and behavior of King Cobras in the wild at Agumbe. Our base camp – Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. Here, Romulus Whitaker and Gowrishankar along with Matt Goode and a team of volunteers are at the forefront of King Cobra research in an effort to help conserve this incredible species. Watch this documentary to find out more about the on-going research work and learn about King Cobras in the wild!

Brief Synopsis: He is the king of serpents: Unblinking, hypnotic, deadly, and hungry for his own kind. The king cobra, the largest venomous snake in the world, is powerful enough to kill a full-grown elephant… and yet we know almost nothing about it. Fortunately, that’s about to change.

Watch the trailer:

The SECRET LIFE of the KING is an unprecedented journey into the natural history of the wild King Cobra following them into their world revealing what they do, where they go, and who they interact with, when we are not around. And surprisingly, the people of India are very much a part of the story. Early evidence suggests that kings might be more intertwined with humans than previously thought, making this project more important than ever. Its a close and personal look into the secret life of the King and the best chance we have of ensuring the survival of this legendary snake.

I can’t believe that it’s already been two months since I left India. I haven’t made any blog updates and hardly any FB updates either! This doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything, it just means that too much is going on that I wouldn’t even know where to start…

The highlight of my visit back to the US so far has been the visit to Boston and DC and screening of The Mountains of the Monsoon at the Baird auditorium in the Smithsonian Museum – The premiere Natural History Museum in the United States. I don’t know if you’ve watched the second part of Night at the Museum with Ben Stiller – I haven’t, but I’m going to go watch it tonight!

Kamal Bawa – Distinguished Professor from the University of Massachusetts and Founder of ATREE – Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, spoke about biodiversity hotspots and in particular about the Western Ghats and the need for conservation across this critical landscape.

Professor Bawa’s talk was then followed by Cristina Mittermeier, Founder of the International League of Conservation Photographers who spoke about the importance of using images to help further conservation. The ILCP is at the front line of spreading conservation through education in particular through the use of imagery.  Watch the video – ILCP

Cristina Mittermeier - Founder of the International League of Conservation Photographers

And after that, the last and least accomplished – myself, did a quick behind the scenes introduction into the making of the documentary which included bits and pieces of everything from bloody leeches to elephants up-close.  This was followed by the screening of the BBC/Animal Planet documentary – The Mountains of the Monsoon. The auditorium had a lovely new projector so even though we played through a DVD, the image looked almost HD, just because the projection was so good. Anyhow, all in all the event turned out quite well and I’d like to thank all who were there, ATREE, ILCP, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and in particular to Debbie Rothberg who helped pull it all together at such short notice!