Photo by @mattiasklumofficial for @natgeo Hard days work....Photographing or filming venomous snakes such as this beautiful and highly venomous rhinoceros viper (30 centimeters or 12 inches away from me) in Ndoki, Republic of Congo, is always rewarding but sometimes quite challenging! Go to @mattiasklumofficial to see why it's called rhinoceros viper! The default position when working with species like this is to try to habituate the snake a bit by approaching it very carefully, and usually and more successfully, with the help from an assistant. Everything can be calm and peaceful until one thing goes wrong... One tiny mistake, one dropped lens cap, one itchy nose or slightly moved soft box... and bang... This kind of scary situation/attack is luckily very uncommon in my career and has only happened when I or my assistants) have been really tired or for some reason become over confident. Cerebral malaria, dengue-fever, typhoid salmonella, global environmental issues, crazy helipilots (irresponsible people) and city traffic is normally what scares me! As I have mentioned previously in my flow, it is the lethal characteristics of snake venom that ironically makes it so valuable and sought after for use in medicinal treatments. The toxic components of snake venom have for example both led to the development of medicine against heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's and this will luckily not affect the wild populations at all! #rhinocerosviper #congo #ecosystemservices #venom #bestjobintheworld #conservation #science #death #snake #medicin #photooftheday @natgeo @thephotosociety by natgeo

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