Sacred groves and serpent-gods moderate human–snake relations

Abstract

Serpent-god worship is an ancient tradition still practiced in many sacred groves across the Western Ghats of India. Although sacred groves there hold ecological conservation value, few studies have focused on arguably the most iconic taxon in the region, snakes. We thus investigated the impact of sacred groves and snake deity worshipping on attitudes towards snakes by conducting surveys with people who had entered sacred groves in the past. We found that very few participants who had encountered snakes inside sacred groves in the past harmed them during these encounters. However, nearly a quarter of all participants do harm snakes if encountered outside sacred groves. We also found that a larger proportion of participants who do not harm snakes outside sacred groves worship snake deities, relative to those that do harm them. Our work thus highlights the influence of sacred groves and snake deity worshipping on pacifistic human–snake relations in Southwestern India. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.