In October 2025, Russian-language media and social network users reported an unusual incident: a viper in a Croatian village had died after attacking a drunken tourist. It is reported that the reptile's venom was neutralized by alcohol, which is why it died. We have verified the accuracy of this story.

One of the largest Russian-language Telegram channels "Live broadcast” (802,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) presented the news as follows: “In Croatia, a poisonous viper died after biting a drunk man, local media write. She could not stand the amount of alcohol in the tourist’s blood. However, the snake’s venom had no effect on the man. He soaked himself in alcohol to such an extent that the alcohol neutralized the deadly substance.” Other publications specify that in the body of a snake was 5.1 g of alcohol per kilogram is a lethal dose even for a person, and the injured man is now asks doctors to document the case to prove to his wife that “everything was not in vain.” As the Telegram channel clarifies, “Ax+"(2.3 million views), the incident occurred in Croatia back in 2017.

According to the TGStat service, more than 1,100 similar Russian-language posts appeared on Telegram, which in total received about 8 million views. The channels "KB plus"(225,000 views), "Rhymes and punches"(212,000), "What's trending?"(173,000), 1337 (159,000), "Banks, money, two offshores"(150,000), "Ivan Utenkov"(147,000), "Barrel of black caviar" (146,000), "Media Russia is not Moscow"(138,000), "Mousetrap"(119,000), "Bloomberg"(117,000), "Freshness"(109,000), "Rhymes and news"(95,000), "Not Morgenstern" (93,000), "Drain Rat"(88,000), "Wire"(87,000), "Bullet"(71,000), "News 360"(66,000), "All-Seeing Eye 18+"(63,000), "Notepad Russia 18+" (59,000), "Rhymes and Morgen"(46,000), "Informant"(43,000), etc. Russian-language media were also interested in the news, including Russian "Arguments and facts", "Gazeta.ru", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", Life.ru, "Russian newspaper", "Radio Sputnik", "Snob", "Regnum", "Evening Moscow", News.ru, "Main regional", "Channel 5" And "Public news service", Belarusian "Belta", "ONT", "Minsk news", STV And "Garlic", Ukrainian TSN, "Divozglyad" And "Judicial and legal newspaper", Kazakh Almaty.tv And "Kazakhstan truth", as well as Moldovan Point. Posts about a snake that bit a drunken Croatian and subsequently died can be found in “VKontakte" And X.

Screenshots of posts from the TGStat service

The authors of many notes and posts on this topic refer to the Croatian website News Bar, some even cite a screenshot of an article published there under the heading “A viper bit a Zagorje (resident of the historical region of Zagorje. - Note “Checked”) and died from alcohol poisoning.” Such news it actually appeared there, more than five years ago (the date of publication is not indicated on the website, however fast this note appeared on the project’s Facebook page* on January 23, 2020). The article says:

“A great tragedy befell the village of Donyi-Vignani in the Imot region. A two-year-old long-nosed viper died due to excessive blood alcohol concentration. The accident occurred when a snake mistakenly bit Štef Radulić from Krapina, who happened to be there on business.
At approximately 14:00, Stef finished his business meeting and went to explore the surrounding area. While walking along a forest path, he probably came too close to the viper, which reacted as any Croatian reacts when an uninvited guest comes to his home.
“Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my leg and turned around. I immediately saw the viper and realized what had happened. I wanted to run to the doctor, but I noticed that something was wrong with the snake. Its eyes were half-closed, it began to stagger and hit its head twice on a tree,” recalls Stef.
<…>
Stef realized that the snake needed help, grabbed it by the neck and ran to the emergency room. But the viper didn't stand a chance. The concentration of alcohol in Stef's blood turned out to be fatal for her.
“Local snakes are simply not used to their natural prey having such a concentration of alcohol in their blood, especially at two o’clock in the afternoon. We measured the alcohol concentration of the viper at 5.1 g/kg, few living creatures can survive this,” said Dr. Mate Drnic.
Interestingly, the snake venom had no effect on Stef at all, because the alcohol in his blood instantly neutralized everything. Satisfied, Stef returned to Krapina and asked the doctor to fax a certificate stating that alcohol saved his life, so that he could finally shut up his wife.”

Media editors and administrators of large Telegram channels not only did not check when this news was published, but also did not find out what the News Bar publication was. And in description The site directly states that only humorous content is posted there. “The news published on the portal is made up for the purpose of creating a satirical and humorous work, so they should not be taken seriously. Any resemblance to real people, phenomena or institutions is accidental,” the authors of News Bar wrote about their project.

Let us note that some media outlets that fell for the newspaper scam later corrected themselves. For example, the Kyrgyzstani publication 24.kg simply deleted material from your website. TV channel "Moscow 24" in his blog on Telegram ten hours after the publication of the post added, that everything is fine with the viper, since the news was published in a Croatian satirical publication. Telegram channel of the site Lenta.ru (72,000 views) coped with this task in 41 minutes. The channels did roughly the same thing “Exploit"(238,000 views), "Backdoor" (142,000), "Trendach" (91,000) and "Not a bug, but a feature"(41,000): they soon clarified that the original source of the news was the Croatian news agency Panorama (spelling preserved). And the channelRestart"(62,000 views) for some reason called the News Bar website German.

Thus, in Croatia, the viper did not die from alcohol intoxication after biting a drunk man. In fact, this is an invention of a local satirical site that was published back in 2020.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities and symbols are prohibited in Russia.

Cover photo: BS Thurner Hof / Wikimedia Commons