The real cobra or cobra of Burma is the longer poisonous serpent of the world. The average of its length is of 3.7 ms but some reach the 5.5 meters. It is a thin serpent, of color trims off lower branches of or brown, with color eyes bronze. It lives in the Philippines, Malaysia, the south of China, Myanmar, India, Thailand and the Malayan peninsula. Its activity is diurnal and it is fed mainly on other serpents. Its poison is very toxic.

The other Asian cobra is well-known as cobra of eyeglasses (due to a drawing similar to eyeglasses that it exhibits in his skin). Rare time reaches a length superior to the 1.8 meters. The widening of the zone of the head of the Asian cobra is, proportionally, much greater than the one of the real cobra and usually is of yellow or brown color, with a drawing in form of eyeglasses in black and white located in the dorsal part and two white specks in the inferior surface. It at night develops his activity during the twilight and, and it is fed on reptiles, birds and rodents. This serpent is cause of many deaths to the year in India, where it is dealt to him with religious respect and rare time death occurs him. It lives from the coast this of the Caspian Sea to China and Malaysia.

Most of the cobras they are native of Africa. Among them it is the escupidora cobra, that lives from the south of Egypt to the north of South Africa; it can sprinkle with its poison the eyes of its victims from a distance of about 2.4 ms, producing fleeting blindness and great pains. The varieties of the escupidora cobra have a color that oscillates from the black kills to the rose, and those of clearer color they exhibit a black band around the neck. The surafricana cobra of necklace, a type different from confined escupidora cobra from South Africa, is smallest of the cobras, just by near 1.2 meters in length. It is of dark or black color brown with channeled grudges and ring of clear color in the neck. The common cobra lives in the coast North Africa.

The poison of the cobras, a neurotoxina, has a devastating effect on the nervous system. Yet, thanks to the greater availability of an effective antidote, the elevated rate of mortality due to its powerful poison has diminished in some zones of Asia. The poison of the cobras comes using in the medical research because it contains an enzyme, lecitinasa, that dissolves the walls of the cells, as well as the membranes that surround to the virus.