Where: Building 9 - Lecture Hall 2322
Description
People over the world have viewed snakes as evil mythical creatures, pests, or disgusting slimy creatures when in fact this is false. In this presentation I will discuss the many species of snakes including ones found in Saudi Arabia and hopefully convince you that these are not necessarily harmful or dangerous to humans and that, in fact, they deserve our respect. Snakes play a vital role in our environment because they are responsible for eliminating disease-causing pests such as mice and rats, If people continue to kill snakes our eco-system will be imbalanced. Snakes are a natural rat eliminator that we can use to our advantage rather than using a rat poison, which might be harmful to our environment. It is generally out of ignorance and baseless fear that many people's first reaction is to obliterate a snake the moment they see one, not realizing how much they are actually damaging the environment. A snake is only a threat to you when you become a threat to it. My goal is to educate the KAUST community about the benefits of having snakes as a part of our ecosystem.
Sid Samtaney
My full name is Siddharth Samtaney. I am currently a student in 11th grade at the Harbor Secondary School in KAUST. I am an accomplished athlete as well as aspiring herpetologist. I have been interested in reptiles and amphibians ever since I can remember. I started catching wild reptiles and amphibians since I was in kindergarten and realized that Herpetology was what I wanted to pursue when I hit 4th grade. Ideveloped a particular interest in snakes in fifth grade. Since then I have had countless pet snakes (wild caught and captive bred), snake bites, read countless herpetology books, have been to many reptile shows, and gained some great information from my learning experiences. I have also volunteered at the NJ Audobon Society nature center taking care of the center's reptiles and other animals. I have worked with naturalists and received hands-on training with wild animals.
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