Ophiophagy

The Mexica people, guided by their god Huitzilopochtli, sought the place where a bird lands on the prickly pear and devours a snake.

[1] It is also possible that the bird was inspired by a laughing falcon or red-tailed hawk, both raptors which feed on a large number of reptiles, including snakes.

An example for this tradition is further seen, metaphorically, in Rudyard Kipling's short story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (part of The Jungle Book), in which a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki defends a human family against a pair of evil cobras.

In Hindu and Buddhist folklore, Garuda (the eagle-deity mount of Vishnu) is the enemy of the Nāgas, a race of intelligent serpent- or dragon-like beings, whom he hunts.

[4] In Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, the author correctly dismisses the idea of mongooses ingesting herbs to combat poison as old folklore.

However, recent studies have shown that the mongoose's ability to resist snake venom is at least in part due to its modified nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (AcChoR) that does not bind with alpha-BTX, and alpha-neurotoxin.