Zookeep­er Wal­ter Bonyun was bit­ten by the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo's Al­bi­no Phy­ton dur­ing feed­ing time on Thurs­day af­ter­noon.

The in­ci­dent took place short­ly af­ter mid­day and the ex­hib­it - a yel­low phy­ton was at the time be­ing viewed through its glass show­case by sev­er­al chil­dren and ac­com­pa­ny­ing adults.

Bonyun in a re­cent in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian said he had been bit­ten nu­mer­ous times by dif­fer­ent species of snakes over the 27 years he has been work­ing at the zoo.

He did give ad­vice on what to do if bit­ten by a snake, in­clud­ing mak­ing sure the wound is free from bac­te­ria, us­ing an al­co­hol-based sub­stance and clean­ing the wound.

"Snakes car­ry bac­te­ria in their sali­va that caus­es an in­fec­tion that may be bad. The teeth of snakes are very smooth and don’t rup­ture tis­sues and rip out the flesh which is some­thing you don’t have to wor­ry about too,” he said.

In a re­lease the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ZSTT) con­firmed the au­then­tic­i­ty of a video that went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia.

It stat­ed that the in­ci­dent took place just af­ter the zookeep­er placed food for the python.

"With the door still open, the python grabbed the mid­sec­tion of the zookeep­er," it not­ed.

It added that in keep­ing with the pro­to­col of al­ways hav­ing two zookeep­ers present dur­ing feed­ing, the sec­ond zookeep­er was able to in­ter­vene, pull away the python and se­cure it, and as­sist his col­league in get­ting med­ical at­ten­tion, "A full in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way."

"The Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo as­sures that there was no dan­ger to the pub­lic. The Zo­o­log­i­cal As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca of which the ZSTT is a mem­ber has been no­ti­fied and would al­so re­view the in­ci­dent, " the re­lease stat­ed.