no they don't

Tadiwa's mother remembers being out in the fields in Mutare a long time ago. She was a child at the time. There was a mother with a young child there, ploughing. It was a strip -- Tadiwa measures with her eyes -- from this table to the fence round the swimming pool. What mothers did then when they got to the fields was to dig a small hollow to put their babies in while they were working. This way a child learned to sit up on its own ("though I think it's awful, leaving your baby like that," Tadiwa says). When this mother got halfway along her strip, she dug another hole, sat the baby in and carried on. She looked round.... and saw a snake coiled round the child (a python?). She started to scream, wanted to yank the child away but she was stopped by an elderly man nearby. "Leave the snake," he told her. "If you grab your child the snake will squeeze." The mother did as she was told and eventually, the snake slithered away. Snakes do not bite babies, the man said.