Russia’s only herpetology center, the Siberian Serpentarium, is located in Novosibirsk.
Russia’s only herpetology center, the Siberian Serpentarium, is located in Novosibirsk.
The center produces the purest snake venom for medicinal purposes. Once the venom is extracted from a snake, it is set aside and crystallized. The process takes up to two days. Then it is delivered to pharmaceutical companies. Novosibirsk herpetologists have learned to produce two to three times more venom per snake than foreign laboratories. Photo: Dried viper venom.
About 1,000 vipers live at the laboratory. Another species, pit vipers, have been used in the past, but they only live in the Far East, which makes catching them expensive. Vipers live in Siberia. Their venom is used to produce medicine to cure central nervous system and locomotor diseases.
Herpetologist Alexander Pisarev has worked at the lab ever since it opened. In fact, he is responsible for preserving the tradition of producing snake venom in Russia. Years ago, he personally caught the snakes. His record is catching 178 snakes per day.
A snake can be tamed, but for that it needs to be picked up and held several times a day. If one or two days are missed, the snake will forget the owner and become wild again.
Experts say that working with snakes and their venom is a very sophisticated process. Other laboratories have been launched in Russia over the years, but the profit margins were so low they quickly went out of business, having produced just a few grams of venom from 1,000 snakes.
