How a 19th-Century Colonial Rumour Became an Economics Lesson
An investigative essay by Friends of Snakes Society, India, correcting one of the longest-running myths in economic history.
Every economics student learns about the “cobra effect,” that cautionary tale of perverse incentives gone wrong. The story goes like this: during British colonial rule in India, the government offered a bounty for dead cobras to reduce the snake population. Clever entrepreneurs allegedly began breeding cobras to collect the reward, and when the government discovered the scheme and cancelled the program, the breeders released their now-worthless snakes, making the problem worse than before.
It is a perfect parable about unintended consequences, taught in classrooms worldwide and cited in countless economics textbooks. There is just one problem: the historical evidence suggests it almost certainly never happened.
The Context: A Medical Mystery
To understand what actually occurred, we need to go back to the late 19th century, when human-snake conflict in British India was a serious concern. Reports compiled by medical officers such as Sir Joseph Fayrer, Surgeon-General of India, estimated that more than 20,000 people were killed by snakes each year in his 1878 report Destruction of Life by Wild Animals and Venomous Snakes in India. Fayrer noted that the returns were “very imperfect, as up to that time no very reliable records were available.” He therefore believed the real mortality for the whole of India was “probably in excess of 20,000 annually.” Snakes were encountered everywhere: in fields, gardens, homes, and even rooftops. The Spectacled Cobra, then referred to as Cobra capello, was identified as “by far the most common” of what were then called “poisonous” species (today we use the term “venomous” to distinguish injected toxins from ingested ones). According to the Times of India of 26th November 1879, Dr. Nicholson, who was appointed in 1873 to superintend the distribution of rewards in Bangalore, estimated the cobra population in that region at around 1,000 per square mile.
Medical science was struggling to find solutions. Dr. John Shortt, M.D., a physician working in India, devoted many years of his life to finding an antidote to cobra venom. According to the Devizes and Wiltshire Advertiser of 16th January 1868, his findings were discouraging: “After much expense, and no little risk to himself, he has found that all are valueless.”
In 1868, Dr. Shortt increased the stakes, offering 500 rupees to anyone who could produce an effective remedy, with the condition that he would supply the cobras and oversee the experiments personally. The Maharajah of Travancore, Sir Sri Ayilyam Thirunal Rama Varma, had taken great interest in solving this issue and added another 1,000 rupees, bringing the total to £150, a substantial sum for the time.
By 1870, scientists understood why the search had failed. The Sun newspaper of London, on 3rd January 1870, published a detailed explanation from the Poonah Observer describing the cobra’s unique anatomy. Its venomous upper fangs are retractable, and if they happen to be folded back during a bite, the victim receives only harmless punctures from the lower teeth. This explained why some bite victims survived. But when the hollow upper fangs properly penetrate and inject venom, the article stated, “no known human agency can ward off fatal results.”
Dr. Shortt’s experiments were exhaustive, and his chemical treatments with potassium permanganate showed potential in controlled experiments but proved largely ineffective in practice. As reported in the Madras Weekly Mail of 2nd September 1882, he “not only used every native remedy brought to his notice, but allowed the possessors of secret nostrums to try their vaunted cures in his presence.” For many years, he offered a reward to anyone who could successfully revive an animal bitten by an active cobra. Every trial failed.
The conclusion was clear: medical science had no effective treatment for cobra envenomation. This remained true for decades. Even by 1894, the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough noted that while “the injection of ammonia has been successful in some cases, and now the injection of strychnine is giving promise of success,” the reality was stark: “the existence of a real antidote has yet to be established.”
No one ever claimed Dr. Shortt’s reward. The 1870 article ended with a recommendation that the government offer rewards for snake removal as an alternative approach to reducing human mortality.
It is worth noting that such bounties were not entirely new. Fayrer’s 1878 paper records that the Bombay Presidency had already been offering rewards for more than fifteen years before the Madras resolution of 1872.
The Bounty Program
Two years later, the Madras Presidency instituted a bounty of two annas (threepence) for every poisonous snake killed. According to the Morning Advertiser of 23rd September 1873, the program started modestly. In March 1872, just 74 snakes were killed across the entire Madras Presidency, earning rewards totalling 18 shillings and sixpence.
By March 1873, just one year later, the monthly count had reached 425,057 snakes, with rewards of £5,313. Over the full year, more than 1.25 million snakes were killed, and the government paid out £15,728 in bounties. The article noted that these numbers “would have been trebled had every part of the Presidency been equally zealous.”
Fayrer’s 1878 paper, Destruction of Life by Wild Animals and Venomous Snakes in India, shows that the bounty system extended far beyond snakes. Rewards were offered for killing a wide range of wild animals such as tigers, leopards, wolves, bears, and hyenas. In some provinces, the reward for a tiger reached as high as 500 rupees. These bounties were part of a broader colonial effort to control wildlife that was seen as a threat to people or livestock.
It is striking that no one ever alleged that people were breeding tigers or wolves to claim rewards. Such suspicions were reserved only for snakes, which were more numerous, less understood, and both culturally feared and revered. This suggests that the rumour reflected colonial imagination rather than observed behaviour.
Bounties for Snake Destruction
Fayrer’s paper also details the rewards paid for killing snakes across different regions. The amounts varied by location:
| Province / Region | Reward per Snake |
| Bengal | 4 annas |
| Berar | – |
| Bombay | 6 pie to 4 annas |
| Burmah | – |
| Central Provinces | 1 rupee |
| Hyderabad | 2 rupees to 8 annas |
| Madras | 1 anna |
| Mysore | 8 annas |
| North-West Provinces | 2 rupees |
| Oude | – |
| Punjab | 2 annas |
| Rajpootana | 1 to 8 annas |
Source: Fayrer, J. (1878). Destruction of Life by Wild Animals and Venomous Snakes in India, p. 9. Some regions reported variable or unrecorded rewards; the table reflects the best available data.
The Sudden Reversal
By an order dated 28th May 1873, the Madras Government abruptly scaled back the program. It restricted rewards to cobras only and cut the bounty in half, from two annas to one. Why did the government take this step? The numbers tell the real story. £15,728 had been paid out in a single year, with potential costs three times higher if all districts had participated.
The Morning Advertiser of 23rd September 1873, citing the Medical Times and Gazette, reported: “The Madras Government seems to have repented of its liberality, and to have thought that even snake-killing might be too dear; therefore, by an order dated May 28, 1873, they have restricted the reward to cobras only, and have fixed it at one anna, or three-halfpence, per cobra. It was alleged that some of the natives used to breed cobras on purpose to get the rewards.” The concern, clearly, was financial rather than fraudulent. Yet that final allegation became the seed of the story that would grow into the “Cobra Effect” and would be repeated for the next 150 years as if it were proven fact. But was any of it true?
The Expert Investigation
Fourteen years later, in 1887, the Government of Bombay faced similar rumours. Rather than act on hearsay, it consulted experts. On 8th June 1887, the Bombay Natural History Society received an official inquiry asking whether snakes were being bred in confinement for government rewards. The Society’s response, published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol. 2 (1887), was definitive.
Mr. H. M. Phipson, the Honorary Secretary, wrote: “With regard to the possibility of snakes being bred in confinement for the sake of Government reward, I have no hesitation in saying (and in this Mr. Vidal thoroughly agrees with me) that such a thing is highly improbable.”
The naturalists examined each of the four venomous species found in the districts of Satara and Ratnagiri:
- Cobra: “Has, to the best of my knowledge, never been known to breed in confinement.”
- Russell’s Viper: Viviparous and unlikely to reproduce outside a carefully constructed serpentarium.
- Saw-scaled Viper: Subject to the same constraints as the viper.
- Krait: Not common in those districts.
These were scientists with firsthand knowledge of snake biology, and not colonial bureaucrats. Their conclusion was clear: breeding cobras for bounties was biologically and logistically improbable given the conditions and knowledge of the time.
What Was Really Happening
Phipson also explained the likely source of the rumour: “The rumours respecting the breeding of poisonous snakes are probably founded on the fact that snakes’ eggs are frequently packed up by the junglemen, who naturally keep them until they hatch, so as to claim the Government reward in the event of the snakes being poisonous; but this practice is one that should be encouraged.”
In other words, people were simply keeping eggs until they could tell whether the hatchlings were venomous. There was nothing fraudulent about it. Phipson added that even keeping gravid females for a short time so that young could be claimed for the bounty was understandable and harmless.
How the Myth Spread
The term “Cobra Effect” was not coined until 2001, by German economist Horst Siebert, who repeated the colonial anecdote without checking historical records.
The rumour began spreading soon after the bounty program. But the actual experience of these programs tells a very different story.
In Bengal, the bounty program was performing poorly. The Friend of India and Statesman reported on 3rd December 1874, that the experiment was an “almost complete failure.” Most divisions reported zero cobras caught. The reasons were clear: the reward of two annas was too small, barely matching what someone could earn from a day’s regular employment. The logistics were prohibitive: people had to capture snakes alive and transport them, often over long distances, to government stations. The risk and danger of handling venomous snakes for such meagre compensation simply wasn’t worthwhile.
The actual snake numbers from Bengal in 1874 were minuscule. The few districts that did participate reported only handfuls of snakes: 3 cobras here, 11 there, 21 in another district.
Yet just two years later, on 9th December 1876, the Driffield Times reported wild allegations about the same Bengal program:
“It is even insinuated that the wily Hindoo has, since the snake premium came out, ‘gone into’ snake breeding on an extensive scale, and that nine-tenths of the slain cobras were reared in his back yard!”
The racist phrasing is revealing. The author treated the claim as speculation (“it is even insinuated”), not verified fact. But notice the absurdity: the article claimed 82,391 cobras were killed in Bengal in 1875. If “nine-tenths” were bred, that would mean over 74,000 cobras were raised in people’s backyards.
How does a program that captured only dozens of snakes in 1874 suddenly produce over 82,000 in 1875 through breeding? It doesn’t. The claim defies both biology and economics. Yet the breeding rumour persisted and spread, transforming from speculation into “fact” with each retelling.
It is worth noting that occasional cases of administrative corruption did occur in earlier wildlife bounty schemes as documented in Fayrer’s paper, where officials falsified records or paid out inflated claims. Such misappropriation reflected flaws in colonial supervision, not evidence of locals breeding snakes or manipulating the system. This matters enormously. Siebert didn’t consult the 1873 newspaper reports, the 1874 program failures, the 1876 speculation, or the 1887 naturalist investigation. He repeated a story that had circulated for over a century without verification. No prosecutions or records of breeding operations exist. After 150 years of retelling, no one has ever produced contemporary documentation of cobra breeding operations.
Conclusion: Time to Retire a Harmful Myth
For generations, the Cobra Effect has been taught as a cautionary tale of perverse incentives. Policymakers cite it, professors teach it, students repeat it. The Cobra Effect was not an example of economic folly. It was colonial rumour, bureaucratic panic, and the failure to consult scientists. Its 150-year survival reveals how easily stories become “truth” when they confirm biases and simplify complexity.
Even where bounty programs appeared successful in the short term, they created unintended ecological consequences. The Field reported on 9th October 1875, about the Sydapet farm where bounties led to the killing of snakes, squirrels, and rats etc. The result? “A great increase of birds.” While the superintendent of the farm presented this as an advantage, the dramatic surge in bird populations signals a severely disrupted ecosystem. Snakes are natural predators that help regulate rodent and bird populations. Their removal, combined with the killing of squirrels and rats, eliminated multiple links in the food chain. Such disruption creates cascading effects, as an explosion in one species (birds) often leads to crop damage, competition for resources, and new pest problems. The short-term “success” of removing perceived threats merely exchanged one set of problems for another, proving why lethal control programs fail from an ecological perspective.
From a conservation perspective, the real lessons are clear: consult experts who understand animal biology, verify claims before acting on them, and recognize that lethal control programs rarely solve wildlife conflicts. Modern approaches emphasize coexistence, education, and medical advances like antivenom, solutions that address the actual problem rather than chasing myths.
Continuing to use “Cobra Effect” today is not innocent shorthand. It perpetuates colonial misinformation that caricatured Indians as cunning opportunists. Every uncritical repetition keeps alive a debunked story, wrapped in academic respectability by an economist who never checked the sources.
We have better language: perverse incentive, incentive trap, policy backfire, unintended consequence. These terms describe the same principle without recycling a racist colonial fable.
The irony is that the real “cobra effect” is about breeding myths, not snakes. A rumour born from nineteenth-century bureaucracy slithered through newspapers, crossed centuries, and coiled itself around modern economics until fiction became “fact.”
If accuracy matters, and if respect matters, we should retire the term, or redefine it honestly as a textbook case of how misinformation spreads when no one checks the source.
Note: This article is based on historical newspaper archives from 1868-1894, the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, and the paper Destruction of Life by Wild Animals and Venomous Snakes in India (J. Fayrer, 1878). All quotations are taken directly from contemporary publications. The discussion of the modern term “Cobra Effect” draws on Horst Siebert’s Der Kobra-Effekt (2001).
Modern snake conservation emphasizes coexistence, education, medical preparedness, and habitat management. Friends of Snakes Society is also exploring AI solutions to prevent snakebite incidents. If you encounter a snake, contact an authorized wildlife rescue organization or your local Forest Department rather than attempting to handle or kill it.
References
- Devizes and Wiltshire Advertiser, January 16, 1868. “The Poison of the Cobra.”
- The Sun (London), January 3, 1870. “Remedy for Cobra Bite.” (from the Poonah Observer).
- Morning Advertiser, September 23, 1873. “Snakes” (citing Medical Times and Gazette).
- Friend of India and Statesman, December 3, 1874. “Snake Hunting.”
- The Field, The Country Gentleman’s Newspaper, October 9, 1875. “THE FARM – Agriculture in Madras.”
- Driffield Times, December 9, 1876. “Slaying the Cobras in India.”
- Fayrer, J. (1878). Destruction of Life by Wild Animals and Venomous Snakes in India: A Paper Read Before the Indian Section of the Society of Arts, Friday, February 1, 1878. London: J. & A. Churchill.
- Times of India, November 26, 1879.
- Madras Weekly Mail, September 2, 1882. Report on Dr. Shortt’s experiments.
- Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol. 2 (1887), pp. 205-206. “Snake-Breeding for the Government Reward.”
- Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, January 10, 1894. “An Indian Cobra Catcher.”
- Siebert, H. (2001). Der Kobra-Effekt: Wie man Irrwege der Wirtschaftspolitik vermeidet. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.
By Friends of Snakes Society, India – the world’s largest community-based snake rescue and conservation organization, dedicated to promoting coexistence between people and reptiles.
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