CORRECTION: Wrong snake blamed

An observant reader noticed that in a July 23  posting  Newsroom  used an incorrect photo  when reporting a death from a snake bite  in a story headlined: “Snake kills 16-year-old girl.”

Viper species are found around the world

The reader wrote : “Newsroom Panama used a photograph of a harmless, non-poisonous species of snake (Pseudoboa neuwiedi, family Colubridae )

Coral snake, colorful but deadly

… Unless the girl’s death was from an over-reaction (e.g., anaphylactic shock) of her own immune system, the bite could not have come from the snake species pictured.  It had to have resulted from the bite of either a pit-viper or a coral snake.