Five hundred snake people, one hill town: Kandy hosts the world's first congress devoted entirely to snakes

The world's most feared animal just got its own world congress. More than 500 researchers, doctors and conservationists from 25 countries gathered in Kandy, Sri Lanka, this week for the first World Congress on Snakes — four days on everything from snakebite treatment to conservation genomics to AI. Sri Lanka earned the honour with 112 snake species, more than half found nowhere else on Earth. Leading the gathering is 86-year-old Prof. Anslem de Silva, a lifelong herpetologist. And behind the wonder is urgency: the WHO estimates snakebite kills between 81,000 and 138,000 people every year — this congress exists to bring that number down.