Who is the snake man?
Raymond Hoser
The snakeman is Raymond Hoser. He's been known by this title since the late 1960's, first in his home town of Sydney, NSW, Australia, but later pretty much everywhere. Ray Hoser's been to Brisbane and the Gold Coast Queensland, where he lived in the 1980's, so everyone there knows him as the snake man. The same applies in other parts of Australia he's spent a lot of time, including Perth, Western Australia, Canberra, ACT, Darwin in the NT, Adelaide, South Australia, Melbourne, Victoria and even places he hasn't been to such as Hobart, Tasmania, where local people contact Hoser seeking his unmatched expertise on reptiles.
The snake man has named more genera and species of snake than anyone in the current century and is unlikely to be surpassed by anyone else due to the limited number of as yet unnamed snakes. In terms of snake genera, he's probably named more valid genera than anyone else in history, the total being somewhere in the vicinty of 90 genera, encompassing many hundreds of species. The snake man was allegedly dropped as a baby by his mother at a shoe sale in the UK and was never quite normal since. He was diagnosed as being obsesssed with snakes and other animals from that day on and his mother was told that Ray will grow out of the obsession at a later age. Now over 50 years old the snakemna hasn't lost the obsession yet!
As a teenager, while other kids collected sporting parephrenalia or whatever, the snakeman just travelled the world collecting Death Adders. Hoser's long been recognized as the leading expert on all things Death Adder and has named 9 of 15 recognized species. However the snakeman's expertise goes way beyond just Death Adders. In fact he's published definitive papers on pretty much everything snake, including boas, pythons, tree snakes, water snakes, kukri snakes, slug eating snakes, cobras, rattlesnakes, other pitvipers, true vipers and even most kinds of blind snakes. Hoser is easily the most widely cited and quoted herpetologist in the world with his name appearing in books on snakes and reptiles from all over the world, including places as diverse as the United States, Europe and of course Australia and New Guinea. Raymond Hoser's reputation as the snakeman has led to him being invited to address reptile conferences and symposia all over the world and his lectures draw the biggest crowds. In his home town of Melbourne, his company does reptile parties and displays daily and weekly and lucky people can get to see the snakeman or his personally trained staff at a given venue. Shopping malls and the like often book the snakeman up to a year in advance in order to get the country's leading expert and best reptiles show at their venue to get a jump on business rivals..