SNAKES ALIVE

Street vendors were caught selling 60 live poisonous snakes including cobras, coral snakes and pit vipers in Beijing's Chaoyang district.

The men, from southern China, said they bred the snakes at home and had already sold some on the street in Shanghai and Ningbo.

The seized snakes have now been sent to Beijing Zoo, the Legal Evening News reports.

Snake poison is used in some traditional Chinese medicine to treat convulsions and paralysis.

Snake pickled in wine is used to treat severe wind while snake bile from the gall bladder is used for everything from whooping cough to hemorrhoids.