How do you feel about snakes? How about the Black Mamba snake which has a 100% fatality rate in an area of Africa where anti-venoms are impossible to access? At 8:00 tonight on WETA TV26 and WETA HD meet a woman who loves serpents so much, she’s roaming Swaziland rescuing Black Mambas found in homes and schools to conduct further research on Africa’s deadliest snake and to release them in the wild. In Nature: Black Mamba, you’ll meet snake handler Thea Litschka-Koen and her husband Clifton as they save the rogue Black Mambas from public areas before they’re killed. You’ll see their education efforts and research methods surrounding the survival of these dangerous creatures. Nature viewers just like you submitted their own questions for Thea last fall and here are her fascinating answers.
If one dose of deadly snakes isn’t enough, at 9:00pm we have the NOVA episode Venom: Nature’s Killer about the most sophisticated of biological and chemical weapons: venom. These complex chemicals can do incredible amounts of painful and irreversible damage, but nature's most potent toxin may also lead the way to a generation of advanced drugs that may help doctors treat heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, and other serious illnesses. Tonight, watch NOVA track down and capture the world's most venomous animals to discover how they can kill us, and how they can save us.
