British colonial officials in India inadvertently created a massive snake breeding industry when they offered a cash bounty for every dead cobra brought to them.

A closer look

British colonial officials in India inadvertently created a massive snake breeding industry when they offered a cash bounty for every dead cobra brought to them. The government's well-intentioned policy was meant to reduce the dangerous venomous snake population in Delhi, but enterprising locals quickly realized they could make a steady income by secretly breeding cobras in their basements just to kill them and collect the reward. Once the frustrated British caught onto the scam and canceled the bounty program, the breeders simply released all their worthless snakes into the wild, resulting in a significantly worse cobra infestation than before. Economists now refer to this spectacular bureaucratic failure as the cobra effect, proving that financial incentives usually just encourage humans to find the most chaotic and counterproductive loopholes imaginable