Are there any snakes that drink milk? I ask because in one of my favorite series, The Malloreon by David Eddings, there is a (fictional species I presume) green venomous snake that has babies and the babies are given milk to drink.

Yeah, that’s fictional- but actually has roots in folkloric and literary precedent! 

Many cultures have it in folklore that snakes drink milk. Milk snakes (the genus Lampropeltis), in fact, got their common name because there’s this old European folk belief that snakes drink milk from cows’ udders. In some parts of India, it’s believed that snakes drink milk because snakes are associated with Shiva and the gods are associated with milk and cattle. In Spain, it’s believed that snakes will drink not only cows’ milk, but also human breast milk and so if you live in the country and you have a baby, you should always check for snakes before you sleep. Otherwise the snake might drink all your milk at night and then your kid won’t get anything the next day! 

The myth of snakes drinking milk shows up in literature, too. There’s this one Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, where Holmes deduces how a snake was trained to enter a room by means of luring it in with a bowl of milk. And in the story he’s right, but in the real world he’s hella wrong. (Actually, that story really annoys me because it screws up a lot of really basic snake facts. This happens a lot in Conan Doyle- I’m pretty sure that as good a writer as he was, he didn’t actually know what a snake was.)