On a tour of the rainforest in Costa Rica, the kids encounter a coral snake that promptly bites, kills and swallows their local guide, pooping out the bones and clothes seconds later. Is there any need for me to comment on this? Sure, coral snakes are dedicated snake eaters and, while venomous, are less prone to bite people than other snakes, and hardly any snake on the planet can swallow a person whole, but really, that’s completely missing the whole point, isn’t it?

This episode is available online in the United States; here’s the relevant clip.

Cartoons with anthropomorphic animal characters are a special case here on Snakes on Film: when you’re dealing with a movie full of intelligent talking animals, you can hardly quibble about snakes with blinking eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes — even flowers in their hair on their head — and that can hear other characters and talk back to them. Pointing out that snakes are deaf and don’t have eyelids is kind of beside the point. Pandas can’t talk either, you know.

But I do have one bone to pick about the highly enjoyable Kung Fu Panda: if one of your kung fu masters is a viper, wouldn’t it make sense for said viper to do what vipers do naturally, rather than try to thwack, strangle and otherwise hiiii-yaa their opponents. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Viper to have inflicted a venomous KUNG FU NOM on Tai Lung? Otherwise, what’s the point of being a viper?