Well, you certainly have a point about Bear Grylls! He's more into making dramatic TV shows than he is into teaching real survival techniques. And guys like Steve Irwin and a South African whose name escapes me at the moment (Austin Stevens?) got far too casual with reptiles. Stevens actually got bitten by a cobra that he was harrassing for the camera.

I think that many snakes hounded on TV have just been released from a cold box and aren't themselves yet. And Irwin reportedly worked with selected docile examples from his zoo much of the time. When he went to Africa, the snakes there were much less tolerant of him, and he kept exclaiming about it! He took very foolish chances witrh a big Egyptian cobra (Naja haje) and caught a black mamba by the tail. It nearly tagged him, which would have been a disaster. Without very prompt access to antivenin and proper medical care (which was distant), victims of mamba bite have almost a 100% death rate. And a red spitting cobra almost got some venom into his eyes, despite his wearing glasses. The guy actually went up trees to approach a green mamba and a boomslang! The lethal dose for a boomslang bite is about 1.5 mg. Most cobra and mamba bites take about 15-20 mg. to kill an average 150 pound man in good shape. However, they often deliver more than that in a bite, and angry mambas and cobras often deliver multple bites.

Even Irwin admitted that he was "sweating bullets" by the time he'd bagged that mamba, and that he was in grave danger in those trees. His anxiety was evident.

I think some of these daring TV hosts are adrenaline junkies.
Anyone who photographs bears from a close distance has got rocks in the head.

T-Star