Spitting cobras are well known, as their name suggests, for their ability to “spit” at a possible threat. In real it is no spitting like in mammals as no saliva is involved. The ejected ﬂuid consists of the snake’s venom, ejected through the fangs (Koch and Sachs, 1927; Rasmussen et al., 1995). In the regions where spitting cobras live, this ability was known for a long time. The cobra depicted on the pharaoh’s crown in ancient Egypt is a spitting cobra (Murray, 1948) and the possible threat of encounters with a spitting cobra could have found its way into the myths of the mediaeval times as the basilisk or cockatrice (Alexander, 1963) which are told to kill on sight. The ﬁrst mentioning of a cobras ability to spit in modern scientiﬁc literature is likely to be the naming of a snake from Java as Naja sputatrix which literally means “spitting Naja” (Boie, 1827). The ﬁrst to taxonomically deﬁne a species known as spitting today (Naja siamensis) was Laurenti (1768) but his description does not state if this species is able to spit venom. The ability to spit venom in a directed manner seems to be unique to spitting cobras. Sometimes a similar ability is reported for the Asian viper Protobothrops mangshanensis (Chen, 1997) but it has not been proven yet. Few reports of other snakes having spat could be the result of venom drops hanging at the fangs of the agitated snake which were then propulsed forward when the snake lunged out.