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Child dies after eating snake eggs

N

Nroc

UnRegistered User
Sibsagar, Mar 3: Consuming snake eggs turned fatal for a 8-year-old child while four other boys are still battling for their lives in a hospital in Assam.

According to official sources the five children were playing in the fields when they came across snake eggs.

They decided to boil and eat them. When all the five of them fell sick, they were rushed to the Sibsagar Civil Hospital.

After eight-year-old Bogai Goala passed away at the hospital, the other four boys identified as Bijit Lai (5), Prabin Lai (4), Maghu Lai (4) and Phagun Lai (7) were shifted to Assam Medical College Hospital located in Dibrugarh district.


http://news.oneindia.in/2010/03/03/child-dies-after-eating-snake-eggs-4-ill.html

What do you guys think? Venomous snake eggs, or bacteria which formed toxins that are impervious to heat? Or something else?
 
Boy I would not have expected that. I would have thought that snake eggs would be nutritionally much the same as chicken eggs. Even venomous snakes, venom is basically a protein which is not dangerous when ingested. My vote is for something bacterial, rotten eggs, something along that line.
 
They probably didn't cook them properly. Four-to-eight-year-olds aren't noted for their knowledge of safe food handling (particularly the ones who find eggs festering in a field in the heat and decide they would make a great snack).
 
Lots of cobras in India. Being neurotoxic animals, I imagine ingesting the venom would be quite hazardous, though I've never deeply or intensely researched the potentiality of it.


Could be a great many variables I would imagine...

Interesting educational point, however, for anyone interested in survival techniques. Watch out for unidentified eggs as a potential food source...
 
You can eat snake eggs as long as they're cooked the same as bird eggs... at least that's what I learned on some travel channel show in Asia. Ingesting venom will not hurt you as Wade mentioned, as your body will break it down as just another protein. Venom has to be injected for it to work, it's poison that has the same effect when ingested. I would say that they were old eggs, or improperly cooked...
 
If they were eating snake eggs it's entirely possible that they were eating other things as well.
 
I vote for bacteria or some other illness as well. Possibly a parasite. I'm taking a food safety class right now and have discovered that you can get food poisoning from such innocuous items as baked potatoes and cooked rice. I'd imagine marginally identified wild eggs laying out in the sun before being (possibly) cooked and handled improperly by children would be a huge risk. Children are at high risk of illness and death from food borne pathogens due to their weaker immune systems.
 
CaptBogart said:
You can eat snake eggs as long as they're cooked the same as bird eggs... at least that's what I learned on some travel channel show in Asia. Ingesting venom will not hurt you as Wade mentioned, as your body will break it down as just another protein. Venom has to be injected for it to work, it's poison that has the same effect when ingested. I would say that they were old eggs, or improperly cooked...
Click to expand...

What if you have an ulcer, cut lip, scratched gum, esophageal tear, or some other entryway to the bloodstream? I don't know, like I said earlier.

It just seems to me that with the incredibly aggressive nature of some of these proteins and amino acids, it would be fairly easy for a direct entry to the blood stream to be located. Especially in the digestive tract of small children. I could WAY off base, because I really have no idea. Just curiosity, really...

I wonder if autopsy reults for toxicity will be reported? It would be very interesting to learn what, precisely, caused the death of the one boy and the severe illness of the others...
 
Of course we are all making a lot of assumptions here. At this point we don’t even know if the eggs were from a venomous snake. If the eggs were developed enough to contain venom, that didn’t get destroyed by the cooking process, I guess it is possible that all 5 boys each had some kind of a lesion in the digestive track that would allow the venom into the blood stream.

Or it could have been salmonella.
 
diamondlil said:
Sounds totally cold to me.
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I'm unashamed. If you live in India of all places, the only place with a competitive number of things that can kill you compared to Australia, and you haven't taught your children not to eat strange things they find baking in the sun... expect the worst. Granted it sounds as though they're all boys, so I'm sure it was a dumb dare ("I'll eat it if you do!").
 
Pepper said:
I'm unashamed. If you live in India of all places, the only place with a competitive number of things that can kill you compared to Australia, and you haven't taught your children not to eat strange things they find baking in the sun... expect the worst. Granted it sounds as though they're all boys, so I'm sure it was a dumb dare ("I'll eat it if you do!").
Click to expand...
I'm not interested in making you ashamed. I just can't find a child's death funny.
 
Both correct....

tyflier said:
What if you have an ulcer, cut lip, scratched gum, esophageal tear, or some other entryway to the bloodstream? I don't know, like I said earlier.

It just seems to me that with the incredibly aggressive nature of some of these proteins and amino acids, it would be fairly easy for a direct entry to the blood stream to be located. Especially in the digestive tract of small children. I could WAY off base, because I really have no idea. Just curiosity, really...

I wonder if autopsy reults for toxicity will be reported? It would be very interesting to learn what, precisely, caused the death of the one boy and the severe illness of the others...
Click to expand...

Chris you and Joe ar both right. You can ingest venom without harm. But if you have bad or cut gums, ulcers etc., etc, you certainly are in trouble. Those who deal with Spitting Cobras the macho way (w/o face shields) often swallow venom.
 
I read the article....

and did a little research. Not being up on my Indian geography like I should be, I was wondering maybe the kind of eggs they may have been. Cobras build nest and protect them. Krait maybe? Could there be some kind of defense mechanism to prevent animals from eating the eggs?
Were they really snake eggs? Not alot of info in the article but it did say they boiled the eggs. Ever see the water they use for cooking? I've seen shows with free roaming rats eating off of peoples plates in the streets.
Would like to know more.
 
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