It seems like we are living in the age of the flaming monkey, but in China, 2025 was the year of the tree snake

Year will change on Wednesday. In Chinese folklore, it has always been customary to divide the years according to some animal and element, such as the ox and water.

While following the fast-paced developments of the US president, it may have felt like we are living in the age of the flaming monkey. However, the year 2025 was the year of the tree snake according to the Orientals.

Horoscopes are silly, but the tree snake really exists. It lives in Africa and its name is boomslang. The name comes from the Dutch Afrikaans language and literally means tree snake. A German would say “baumschlange”.

Boomslang so he enjoys himself in the trees. The snake is good at climbing and it likes to eat birds’ eggs and chicks. The diet also includes other small animals. The snake, which grows to about one and a half meters in length, varies in color from green to brown and can be found almost everywhere in Africa. The snake has squinty, stormy eyes.

Boomslang belongs to garden snakes and is a rare representative of its tribe in that it is deadly poisonous. Most garden snakes are non-venomous and otherwise harmless.

Unlike many other snakes, the boomslang’s fangs are hidden in the back of its mouth. Boomslang does not easily bite a human and there is an antidote.

Poison however, is particularly insidious as it kills with a delay. The first symptoms may appear only hours after the bite. Eventually, the victim dies of internal bleeding. This was harshly stated by the snake researcher Karl Schmidtwho was bitten in 1957 while studying a tree snake.

Schmidt, who worked at a natural history museum, did not believe the snake was poisonous and handled it carelessly. As evening came, he began to feel a little unwell.

Like a good scientist, Schmidt kept a careful record of the progress of the symptoms and even refused treatment so that the accurate reporting of the symptoms would not be disturbed. He didn’t think he was going to die. The next day, however, he died.