Rinkhals

Looking back over the years there are certain places which I would describe as being as close to paradise on Earth as is possible. This is one of them, the cottage beside the ford over the Pungwe River high in the Inyanga Mountains along the eastern border of what was, in those days, Rhodesia. We went there with friends - mostly the Witts - and the main purpose of these holidays, as far as I was concerned , was to....

....catch the rainbow trout which teemed in Inyanga's rivers, especially the Pungwe and Matenderere.

However, as in every paradise, there has to be a snake. We were quite used to the idea of living with snakes - we had them in our garden and, at times, in the roof of our house - but I recall being warned of a snake which was only to be found in the steep grasslands of Inyanga region and which was particularly dangerous - partly from its habit of feigning death and, when picked up, directing a stream of poison into the eyes.

Its name was the rinkhals, and all this only comes to mind because last week's 'New Scientist' has an article in it about the Inyanga rinkhals.

Scientists have been rather intrigued by it as - despite its looks - it isn't a cobra and the nearest rinkhals population to the Zimbabwean rinkhals is many miles away in South Africa. The Zimbabwe snake is now so rare that the University of Bangor had to carry out their research on a skin found in the 1980s and stored in a museum in Bulawayo. Using recent advances in DNA analysis, they discovered that it was a subspecies of the South African species, Hemachatus hemachatus, which they have named H. nyangensis.

I don't recall there being any suggestion that rinkhals were rare when we were in Rhodesia in the 1960s. I may have been frightened of bumping into one but I would be deeply saddened to have it confirmed that this unusual and rather beautiful snake is no more.

See Bangor article here.

Rinkhals photo courtesy Wikipedia.