My love affair with cobras continue. The cobras are my all time favorite reptiles. I have always been fascinated with them from childhood. I am sure the stories my dad narrated to me as a child helped a lot. He used to talk about my granddad's encounters with the cobras over the years. It so happens that my granddad used to be a small game hunter and so I used to love his adventure stories.

So when I read about the new African species of spitting cobras, I was quite interested.

The newly anointed Ashe's spitting cobra, or large brown spitting cobra (Naja ashei), can reach lengths of more than 9 feet (274 centimeters) and is believed to deliver more venom with a single bite than any other cobra on the planet.

The aggressive reptile was previously identified as a brown-colored variant of the black-necked spitting cobra, though researchers had long suspected that it merited its own species. Now blood and tissue analysis have confirmed this theory to be true.

The snake dwells in the dry lowlands of north and east Kenya, as well as in Uganda and Ethiopia.

Of course, King Cobra is the longest of all venomous snakes with lengths up to 18.5 ft (5.7 m), but it is not part of the cobra family.

Read more at National Geographic. And more pictures here.

Update: A beautiful article on the large brown spitting cobra can be found at Saving Snakes blog at Wild Life Direct.

I am not sure, but I think this is from Sriracha zoo in Thailand on the way to Pattaya from Bangkok. We saw this live in the zoo when we were in Thailand a month ago.

If anyone has a different answer to this photo, do let me know. From Nothing to do with Arbroath.

Who doesn't believe Bruce Lee is the king of Martial arts? If you are one of them as I am, you are going to love these facts about the Master.

Excerpts from "10 Kick Ass Facts About Bruce Lee"

Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon (1973). Image: Lexinatrix [Flickr] through Neatorama

3. Bruce Lee Never Lost a Fight
Well, actually he lost a fight only once in his life: when he was 13 years old. This loss actually prompted Bruce to learn martial arts from a Wing Chun master named Yip Man. After other students learned that Bruce wasn’t pure Chinese, they refused to let him train in their class. Yip Man had to train him privately.

8. Bruce Lee was Strong
In 1964, Bruce was invited to a karate championship in Long Beach, California. There he performed his famous "One Inch Punch," where he would deliver a devastating blow from only an inch away, sending his opponent flying back!

Bob Baker of Stockton, whom Bruce hit, said "I told Bruce not to do this type of demonstration again. When he punched me that last time, I had to stay home from work because the pain in my chest was unbearable."

… and Fast!
Most martial art films are sped up to make fighting scenes appear fast, but not Bruce Lee’s. His moves were too fast to be captured on the regular 24 frames per second film - so they had to film him at 32 fps, and run the film slower so you can see his moves.

Read more interesting things about Bruce Lee at Neatorama.