This place is called Morgan Island and it’s a small bit of land where nobody lives, but thousands of creatures would call it home if they could speak.
Should you sail up to the island’s shores you’ll notice that the trees extend all the way to the water and there’ll be signs warning you to stay the hell away
“Do not feed, approach, disturb, molest, or injure the animals,” it’ll warn you, before saying that ‘violators will be prosecuted’.
It’s pretty clear you should stay away from the island and its inhabitants (YouTube/ Mason Obscura)
While nobody lives on the island it’s home to a breeding colony of around 4,000 rhesus monkeys, also known as rhesus macaques.
The colony of monkeys were originally situated in a location on Puerto Rico, but the animals kept escaping and spreading herpes B infections wherever they went.
With Puerto Rico wanting rid of the monkeys, South Carolina offered the uninhabited Morgan Island as a new haven for these monkeys and they were moved across in 1979 and 1980.
The only people permitted to set foot on this island are researchers who’ve been granted official approval to travel there and study the residents, with the monkeys living there technically being owned by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
They’re used for biomedical research, with up to hundreds of monkeys being taken from the island each year, but safeguards are in place to try and stop them from breaking out and causing new outbreaks of herpes.
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There’s a few thousand of these things on the island (Getty Stock Photo)
This whole thing isn’t without risk, as last month a group of 43 monkeys escaped from a research facility in South Carolina and weeks later some of them were still missing.
The group made a break for it on 6 November after their enclosure was not properly locked and while most were quickly recaptured it took a while for some of the other errant primates took longer to track down.
So you’d best stay away from the colony of monkeys lest you mess up the efforts of researchers and potentially even catch something nasty.
If 28 Days Later has taught us anything, it’s that you really shouldn’t mess with research monkeys because you never know what you might catch from them.
I mean, living in the UK, we don’t exactly come across giant huntsman spiders to be scared of on every corner. And we certainly don’t find ourselves dealing with whopper snacks to win some food in a Bushtucker Trial.
So, if you’ve recently started having fresh nightmares about the slithering things wrapping themselves around your body, there’s something you might want to avoid.
That’s because if you drop a Google Maps pin on Snake Island while you’re browsing random destinations, a rather frightening thing happens.
The golden lancehead is exclusively found on Snake Island (Getty Stock)
Oh yeah, that’s a real place said to be home to around 4,000 of the world’s deadliest snakes. And with an area of just 106 acres, that works out at between three and five of the things per square metre.
That’s a lotta snakes.
Critically endangered golden lancehead vipers also only live on Ilha da Queimada Grande, hence its not so friendly Snake Island nickname.
While the species primarily scrans on birds, their potent venom can be lethal to us humans, with the possibility to kill us in just an hour.
It’s not your typical view (Google Maps)
So, it’s hardly a disappointment that people aren’t allowed to visit the place for the sake of both them and the creatures – because who wants their flesh melted by a snake?
But the one way you can kind of pay a visit is of course by playing about on Google Maps.
Go on, admit it, you’re guilty of killing some time or procrastinating a bit by dropping pins on random places and having a wander around.
And if you drop a pin on Snake Island you might end up jumping at your screen, so maybe save it for a work from home procrastination session rather than in the office.
If you’ve done it, you’ve got to admit it can be a bit of a shock initially but you’d really have to be absolutely terrified of snakes to be scared just looking at it.
You’ve got to laugh really. Total respect to the person editing a giant image of a snake onto a road in the middle of the island.
And it looks like they’re pros at this point, judging by their YouTube channel, as they’ve got plenty of videos like this.
How did they do it, you may be asking? Well, Google Maps has a nifty feature that allows you to upload 360 degree images with Street View Studio.
The real snakes, however, ended up on Quiemada Grande thousands of years ago following the end of the last ice age, as the rising sea levels disconnected the island from Brazil’s mainland.
You know, like ‘puppy island’ or ‘bunny island’… that would be cute right?
Except this real spot nicknamed Snake Island is so deadly no human is ever allowed to visit.
And they’re not just harmless grass snakes like we have in the UK or the kind you’d want to hold around your neck like Britney Spears, they’re golden lancehead vipers.
Critically endangered, the snake is one of the most venous snakes in the world.
The golden lancehead only lives on Snake Island, about 30 miles off the coast of Brazil.
While it primarily eats birds, the potent venom can be lethal to humans, with the possibility to kill you within just an hour.
So, it’s hardly a disappointment that people aren’t allowed to visit the place for the sake of both them and the creatures – because who wants their flesh melted by a snake?
The snakes became trapped on Quiemada Grande thousands of years ago following the end of the last ice age, as the rising sea levels disconnected the island from Brazil’s mainland.
Authorities only let a small handful of scientists visit Snake Island a year but a 9 News reporter was previously given unprecedented access for 60 Minutes and was joined by a medical team.
Speaking to news.com.au, Tara Brown said she was warned not to go by local fishermen.
She said: “When we’re speaking to local fisherman, they told us, ‘That’s not a good idea, you don’t want to go there’. There are legends about a whole family being killed there, and of pirates burying treasure on the island and the snakes being put there to protect the treasure.
“The fishermen said they never went there, or they would die.”
As the years have gone by, the venom of the snakes there has actually evolved to be even more deadly.
Brown explained: “They’re different to their mainland cousins in that they’re five times more venomous and they are among the top 10 most poisonous snakes in the world.
“They hunt and eat birds. Not the local birds, who have become too smart for them, but larger migratory birds, boobies, who come by on their migration. And the snakes’ venom has become more potent because their prey is bigger.
“It’s an incredibly interesting evolutionary experiment for scientists to observe. This is a laboratory in the wild, if you like. You see evolution at play.”
