Man cuts his own finger to contain snake venom and discovers it wasn’t even poisonous

What was supposed to be an act of courage ended in a painful, and quite ironic, lesson. A 60-year-old man, identified as Zhang, ended up cutting his own finger after being bitten by a snake in a rural area near Hangzhou, China.

Fearing the worst, the farmer believed he had been attacked by a species known locally as the “five-step snake”, so called due to the popular belief that its victims would not be able to take more than five steps before dying.

Taken by despair, Zhang decided to amputate his finger to contain the supposed spread of the poison. He then traveled about 80 kilometers to the nearest hospital, where he received the surprising news: the snake was not poisonous.

According to doctors, the animal identified was a Deinagkistrodon, a common species in the region, but without lethal venom. The heroic and hasty gesture ended up resulting in permanent damage.

To make matters worse, the elderly man left his amputated finger at the site of the bite, which made any attempt at reimplantation impossible. “If he had brought the limb, we could have performed a reimplantation surgery with a good chance of success,” explained one of the surgeons.

Zhang is doing well, but her story went viral on Chinese social media as a reminder that not every survival instinct is a good advisor.