During a jungle survival program February 20, 2013 taught by Royal Thai Special Forces in Sannapit, Thailand, U.S. Marines learned to catch cobras and drink their fresh blood, not to mention eat forest insects and pull the heads off of chicken. The training was part of Operation Cobra Gold 13, the 32nd edition of international military exercises hosted by the Thai. According to a U.S. Marines press release, Cobra Gold is the largest exercise of its kind in Asia and incorporates troops from five other nations in addition to the U.S. and Thailand. The Daily Mail reports that the Marines were invited to experience the local custom of drinking cobra blood after being taught to catch and kill cobras in the wild. As CNN notes, Cobra blood is believed to be a panacea and aphrodiasic in parts of Southeast Asia. In Jakarta, vendors can earn over $100 a night selling shots of cobra blood mixed with liquor. (Photo by Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP Photo)

People dance during New Year's celebrations in downtown St. Petersburg, Russia, early Sunday, Januaru 1, 2023. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A man adjusts vermicelli, a specialty eaten during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, at a factory in Chandigarh, India, June 30, 2016. (Photo by Ajay Verma/Reuters)

An officer of the Afghan border police throws an assault rifle to a policeman participating in a military exercise on the outskirts of Herat, Afghanistan, Monday, September 7, 2015. Twelve female and seventy male border police personnel participated in the military exercise near the border with Iran in Herat province. (Photo by Hoshang Hashimi/AP Photo)

In this September 1, 2016 photo, 90-year-old street vendor Antonio Bauza waits for tourists to sell his bananas, next to the village church in Remedios, Cuba. With the arrival of the first commercial flights from the U.S. to Cuba in more than 50 years, the Cuban government is welcoming the wave of new visitors and struggling to update infrastructure that's already overwhelmed. (Photo by Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

An Afghan policeman frisks a man while a burqa-cald woman sits in the trunk of a car on a roadside in Herat, Afghanistan, 05 July 2015. At least 18 police, two civilians and 30 rebels were killed in central Afghanistan during three days of fierce fighting, police said on 04 July. The clashes ended 04 July after security forces retook control of nine police checkpoints that had fallen to the rebels. (Photo by Jalil Rezayee/EPA)

A Tibetan nomad family crowds on a motorcycle at a camp for cordycep pickers on May 21, 2016 near Sershul on the Tibetan Plateau in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan province. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

A man carrying buckets walks along a beach littered with piles of debris and plastic waste at the Kedonganan beach in Bali, Indonesia, 19 March 2024. Most of the trash ends up in the sea every rainy season due to the island's lack of a centralized waste management system. (Photo by Made Nagi/EPA/EFE)