- [David] The Great Amazon forest is home to the world's greatest variety of wildlife.

Especially snakes.

Many of these forest creatures are highly venomous.

That explains at least partially why snakes figure so prominently in native mythology, oral history and religion.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Announcer] Funding for, "In the Americas" with David Yetman, was provided by Agnese Haury.

Funding for, "In the Americas" with David Yetman, was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

(upbeat music) - The Amazon forest is one of the world's great producers of oxygen.

Without the Amazon forest, our planet will be drier and will become hotter.

Just North of Manaus in the heart of Brazil's Amazon region, a lofty tower gives me an opportunity of a sweeping view of the great forest and the river complex.

The city of Manaus is located almost a thousand miles from the mouth of the Amazon, upstream.

It's situated where the Rio Negro or the black river comes in from the North and Solimoes comes in from the West to form the Amazon, the world's greatest river.

The city has a population of over 2 million people.

It's only accessible by airplane or by boat.

And yet it is a huge city full of traffic, full of industry.

It's hard to believe that not very far outside lies the greatest forest in the world.

(upbeat music) The only way to get close up to the life in that deep jungle is on a boat.

It will take us to meet some (indistinct).

People who live along the Rio Negro, the black river.

These folks meet wildlife including snakes, face to face every day.

My friend, Aldevan Elias who is indigenous himself is willing to introduce us to some of the (indistinct).

(Aldevan speaking in foreign) - When he was younger he was working with his brother, cleaning a path.

And his brother felt something down on his leg.

And he thought it was just, it was just maybe a spine or something, but it turned around.

It was a bite.

They took him immediately to the hospital and treated him.

He was in the hospital for over a week.

(Aldevan speaking in foreign) - In the Amazon region the wet season ends right about the time that we're here.

We're lucky.

Then begins the dry season.

And the level drops during that next six months.

It doesn't rain as much.

So land appears everywhere, where there is now just water for hundreds for even thousands of square miles, land is just inundated.

Then the river goes down.

The land is drained and you have dry land.

There's two distinct seasons although, one is very rainy and the other is not quite so rainy.

(rain pouring) This is an aerial view of the black river, the Rio Negro.

Here's the city of Manaus, this purplish area the urbanized area, about 150 kilometers, maybe 90 miles to the Northwest on the Rio Negro, is where we are right here.

And the indigenous people, of all this area refer to this place, this general region as the birthplace of their culture, their birthplace.

(indigenous music playing) The water here is as confusing as it could be.

The lake is mixing reflections with reality, but at any rate it is a channel on an island in the middle of the river, where the high water mark is right about now at, toward the end of May.

The water in the Rio Negro which is called the black river is very dark colored.

Because of the geology of the upper basin of the Rio Negro, produces a acid condition in the water.

You can drink this water safely.

And because of the acidity there are no mosquitoes.

In the dry season this will all be dry land.

It was in a place very much like this, that our boat pilot is moving a boat through and reached up and grabbed a branch and had the misfortune to have a tree viper right there and bit him on the wrist.

(Aldevan speaking in foreign) - Almost anywhere you go in the Amazon basin.

If you talk to people who live by the river or in the forest they will have a story about snakes and snake bites.

It is something you expect in the Amazon.

- [Interpreter] This poster diagram shows the kinds of venomous snakes and critters, we can see here in this region.

A few years ago I was cutting a path through the forest with my machete.

And I felt a stinging sensation just above my ankle.

I thought it was from a branch, but when I looked closer, I realized it was a snake bite.

I was one and a half to two hours away from the road.

When we got back to camp, I went into the river to bath, and I instantly felt the pain because my body cooled down.

We hiked out to the road to ask for a ride to the nearest town.

We brought the snake with us so they could know what was the correct antivenom treatment.

When we got into town I was given the antidote.

The second time I was bitten by a snake, I was fishing in a place just like this.

I was distracted and brushed up against the branch.

The snake was coiled up in the branch and bit me.

- So many people suffer bites from venomous snakes that the Brazilian government has set up a special research institute for study and treatment of those bites.

Here in Manaus is the Center for Research into Tropical Medicine.

It's also a clinic.

They study all kinds of tropical medicine but especially interesting is the treatment of snake bites and other venomous critters.

This is where they do the research and have the records.

I'm told that in here they have a lot of snakes preserved.

- Here we have the bushmaster.

- Oh my gosh.

It is huge.

- It is the biggest venomous snakes in the Americas - For they're quite rare but the most feared of all poisonous snakes in the Americas.

It is capable of packing a huge amount of venom.

Fortunately, for people they're not common.

- No, they are not common.

And they don't deserve the bad reputation they have.

They are not particularly aggressive toward people.

Basically in Brazil we have four general option dangerous snakes, four groups.

The lancehead's, they are the main group of venomous snakes.

The bushmaster.

The rattlesnakes, of them are vipers are pit vipers.

You can recognize them by the presence of a loreal pit, a small air for holes between the nostril and the eye.

- That's the pit.

- That's the pit.

- So pit vipers are pit- - All snakes that possess loreal pits are venomous.

In the Americas, the only (indistinct) are the coral snakes.

- You've got rattlesnakes, you've got coral snakes and you've got fer-de-lance's, which are the ones to worry about?

- Well, in Brazil, as general, the lanceheads, the Bothrops genus, are the most dangerous to people.

In Brazil they cause about 80 to 90% of all snake bites.

And people working in agriculture land are very prone to be bitten by this snakes.

All these jars are from snakes that have bitten people and all these jars behind me, but a few, are from lanceheads.

(children chattering) - [David] Somebody gets bitten they're supposed to bring the snake with them?

- [Pedro] Yes.

And we have case which the patient didn't bring the snake.

- [David] So you don't know what kind of snake bit them?

- We know because of the symptoms they develop.

The point is we have lots of more accidents than we can see here.

On average you have 20,000 snake bites in Brazil, each year and a little over a hundred deaths each year by snake bites.

The snake can bite someone and doesn't inject venom at all.

But if the snake injects venom, it involves a lot of factors.

For example, the health of the patient prior to the bite, the size of the snake, the amount of venom injected.

In Brazil, it's mandatory to all-in-one (indistinct) to have at least one medical center able to start maintaining and use the anti-venom.

Not only for snakes but also from all the venomous animals that we manufacture the interims.

Some species of snakes, the juveniles have more toxic venoms.

The matter is that the adults can inject much more venom.

- [David] So the young ones are more potent but the older have more venom?

- [Pedro] Yes.

- You don't get off easily if you're bitten by a young snake.

- Yeah.

This is next, our ground dwelling snakes.

So they living on dead leaves on the ground.

So where people are walking on the jungle, they don't see the snake because the coloration renders their good camouflage.

We have problems with spiders and scorpions too.

This is one Brazilian wander spider.

Most venomous spider in the world.

It has a neurotoxic venom.

It causes a lot of pain.

It can affect your heart rate, cause shock.

And there's a curiosity about this spider because can give you a painful reaction, in some case.

Probably it's the most common cause of spiders bite.

- Here in the snake lab, they have educational posters advising people who live in the sticks about how dangerous they are and what they look like.

Here are the four different groups of venomous snakes that might be dangerous.

But most interesting to me is that this little sign, it says, every citizen has a right to free antivenom treatment for, from a poisonous snake.

That's so different from the United States, here it's free in the US at least $2,000, a vial for snakebite treatment.

And you may need multiple vials.

That's a wonderful difference in Brazil.

A short distance away is another important institution.

Since many military personnel must work or patrol in the jungle, the Brazilian military has established a living museum of potentially dangerous creatures.

Here students of the forest can learn firsthand about the biology of these jungle denizen's.

All the creatures in this research zoo have been rescued from the chainsaw, the fire and the plow.

In Manaus, it rains.

Most days you expect rain a hundred inches or more a year.

It's an ideal location in the forest, for the Center for Instruction in Jungle Warfare, part of the Brazilian military.

But it's far more than that.

It actually is a Center for Conservation and Public Education.

(Davi speaking in foreign) - [Interpreter] Every soldier deployed here in the Amazon region is trained before he is sent out into the jungle.

The trainee focuses on three things.

Firstly, how to identify what animals might be harmful to the soldier while he is in the jungle.

For example, all the venomous animals like snakes, spiders, scorpions.

The soldier learns how to identify these potentially dangerous animals before entering the jungle.

Secondly, the soldier learns to handle these animals if needed.

And lastly, the soldier learns the necessary steps to apply first aid, in the event of an emergency.

- The Amazon forest has a big variety of boas and this particular snake, the anaconda, it's by far the biggest reptile, at least the biggest snake in the Americas.

Supposedly they get up to 40 feet long or even more.

They're not particularly great hazard.

Although if accidentally they were to get you they could inflict some serious harm by strangling you death, and then drowning you.

(Davi speaking in foreign) - [Interpreter] This military zoo only takes in animals at risk, for example, injured animals or rescue pets.

We never capture animals from their natural habitat just for entertainment purposes.

This zoo is the second largest attraction here in Manaus.

Second only to the downtown opera house.

We receive visitors from all over, including students from public and private schools.

Ranging from elementary school to university students.

These students come here to participate in our diverse environmental education programs.

The animals here also provide a biological resource for many Amazon jungle research projects.

- And the biggest attraction in the zoo is their display of jaguars.

They call them oncas in Brazil.

And we have a very rare example of a black jaguar.

Quite a custom to showing off his beauty.

And I can complacent.

Back on the river, we journey upstream to visit an indigenous village to learn the importance of snakes, to their material and spiritual culture.

As we go up the Rio Negro, the black river from Manaus, we begin to realize the immensity of this river.

It goes on for more than a thousand miles up into the Highlands of the Guyana's, but even around Manaus and upstream, it is the property of indigenous peoples.

There are 22 different languages spoken in these indigenous communities, 22 different communities.

And the languages are mutually unintelligible but they carry on pretty much as they have because their only way of communication with the outside is some electronics and mostly by boat.

No roads reach those communities.

These indigenous communities have been more or less isolated for a long time and are associated with a jungle that has a lot of venomous snakes.

Many of them don't have antivenin available but they do have traditional remedies for snake bites.

And part of what I'm interested in here is finding out just what they do in the absence of modern medicine.

(Aldevan speaking in foreign) - [Interpreter] In our indigenous communities, the elders, our grandparents and great-grandparents treated snake bites without taking the injured person to the hospital.

We have a very rare plant referred to as a taja.

The bark is the same color as the jararaca.

The skin color of the benign snake.

So whoever has a taja, has to take special care of this rare plant.

It's very difficult to find.

In our indigenous tradition the big snake represents a canoe of rebirth.

We indigenous people have two worlds.

The first and second world.

The first is before the indigenous rebirth.

And the second is after the indigenous rebirth.

The first world is our spiritual world, place of our origin.

The second world is this one, the material world the one in which we were born.

(indigenous music playing) When we moved from the first world into the world of the present.

We were only one family, one ethnic group and had one language.

This big snake for the indigenous people represents a canoe.

Our transition from the spiritual world to the material world occurred as a journey inside this big snake.

That is why we refer to this snake as a rebirth canoe.

In the first world, the pink river dolphins, the snakes and the alligators were all guardians of the indigenous people.

This structure is our indigenous center called CIPIA, means happy people.

We natives, never had a written language.

Our language is in oral tradition.

Song, spiritual prayers and music, always in our head never written.

The last word on the plaque, is TOOPA Wii.

TOOPA Wii refers to the same structure as in indigenous health centers of traditional medicinal healthcare.

All these design patterns are our roots.

This design represents the big snake.

The rebirth canoe.

Rubbing this leaf on your skin will protect you in the forest, as well as in the water.

It will keep you safe from alligators, river dolphins and snakes as preventive medicine.

The more we crush the leaves, the better it smells.

- The indigenous people view protection as both spiritual and material.

So it's a combination.

You can't really distinguish between the two but before they go out into a place where they're liable to experience some danger from the snakes, from bees, from scorpions, any sort of venomous critter, they rub this in their hands.

And it smells great.

And then they rub it all over their body.

And then it gives both spiritual and natural protection.

- [Interpreter] If you're ever bitten by the snake over here you will find the medicine for treatment.

When you go into the forest you need to take this plant seed with you.

The tuber, at the base of the plant.

- This is the plant that is used for curing or treating snake bites.

I wish I knew what it is, but what is oddest about it, and not only is its curative properties but the bark on the stalk here resembles the skin or the skin coloration of the fer-de-lances.

So it's with it's resembles the animal and it cures the effects of the animal bite.

- [Interpreter] The bark color is the same as the skin color of the jararaca.

The fer-de-lance.

If bitten, you're not going to have enough time to build a fire, boil-water and make a tea.

So you have to chew it, swallow it and rub it wherever you were bitten.

After swallowing a piece of the tuber your entire body will start to itch, itch and itch all over.

The snake venom will leave the body.

It purges the snake's venom from the bottom.

- He is a witness to it because he has been bitten himself.

He used that remedy and it is used by all the indigenous people in the area.

(indigenous people singing) (upbeat music) The Amazon forest is by far the largest tropical forest in the world.

Before it was attacked by the lumber man and the cattle man and the soybean farmer.

It occupied over a million and a half square miles more than half the area of the United States.

It extends into the Guyana's and to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

It has more species of fauna, of wildlife than anywhere else in the world.

Throughout the Americas, the imagery of snakes cast deep shadows into cultures.

Almost everywhere we find that snakes are very important.

They have deep significance.

In my own culture, many people are afraid of snakes.

Most people are fascinated by them even if they're afraid of them, but here in the Amazon they form a basic cultural bedrock.

And it's interesting to see how it affects their whole relationship with those critters they encounter every day.

(indigenous people singing) Join us next time in the Americas with me, David Yetman.

Most people in my country have never experienced an encounter with a venomous critter.

In Brazil, such encounters are far more common.

Be it scorpions spiders or snakes.

Bites and stings are a problem.

For many decades the Brazilian government has sponsored sophisticated research into the production of antivenom.

In the middle Amazon where we are right now, the rainy season means more rain every day.

And sometimes much of the day, it may start off sunny but sooner or later, the rains will come.

If you're inside the canopy, it is very different because the rain strikes a million leaves before it can reach the ground.

The rain in the rainforest is truly a marvelous rain.

- [Announcer] Funding for, "In the Americas" with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

Funding for, "In the Americas" with David Yetman was also provided for by the Guilford Fund.

Copies of this and other episodes of "In the Americas" with David Yetman, are available from the Southwest center, to order call 1-800-937-8632.

Please mention the episode number and program title.

Please be sure to visit us at intheamericas.com or intheamericas.org.