Shocking moment Indian officer attempts CPR on poisoned snake

An Indian constable known for rescuing snakes gave one serpent mouth-to-mouth CPR in an attempt to save it after it had been poisoned by pesticides, according to a viral video.

Shocking footage uploaded across social media shows the moment Atul Sharma, of Madhya Pradesh, rushed to attend to a non-venomous snake that had slithered into a local water pipeline being treated with pesticide last Tuesday.

The daring cop could be seen holding the motionless serpent by the head and blowing air into its mouth repeatedly.

The officer also splashed the snake with handfuls of clean water to wash out the pesticide until the snake appeared to come to, responding to Sharma’s gentle petting.

With the snake slithering again, the officer took it in for rehabilitation before setting it back safely into the wild, India Today reports.

Although Sharma — who touts himself as a “self-taught snake rescuer” — claimed his CPR was key to reviving the animal, the procedure doesn’t actually work on the reptiles.

“Unlike mammals, snakes don’t have lungs that can be inflated using CPR,” the Everything Reptilion website states. “Instead, they have a series of air sacs that allow them to breathe.

“…As a result, it’s simply not possible to use CPR to resuscitate a snake,” it notes.

The use of water likely played a better role in saving the snake, as Everything Reptilion states that the best bet to resuscitate a serpent is to “place it in a container with warm water and try to stimulate its muscles.”

Asked where exactly he learned to give a snake CPR, Sharma said that he follows “the Discovery Channel” closely, NDTV reports.

The Indian officer also claims he has saved more than 500 snakes since 2008.