A woman from the state of Orissa, Eastern India has fallen in love and married a King Cobra, according to the Press Trust of India.
2,000 guests are reported to have watched priests chant sacred mantras to seal the Hindu marital ceremony between Bimbala Das and the largest, most venomous snake in the world.
However the ‘groom’, having seemingly got ‘cold scales’ on the day, failed to surface from the ant hill where it lives, and was represented by a brass replica.
“Though snakes cannot speak nor understand, we communicate in a peculiar way,” said Das, 30, who believes that the reptile aided her recovery through illness.
“I always get to see it every time I go near the ant hill. It has never harmed me,” she added.
Das is a member of the Vaishnav sect, a group that promotes vegetarianism and a religious reverence of animals. Local elders can permit inter-species marriage and, earlier this year, a girl from a tribe of the same region was married off to a dog.
