Carbolic Acid is a Snake repellent - Myth or Truth?

Phenol (C6H5OH) is commercially available as Carbolic Acid in local market.

The extensive use of carbolic acid is found as snake repellent in rural India. Many people thought that the carbolic acid has extensive property as snake repellent due to its odour. The question on repellent characteristics of carbolic acid  arises due to the validity of smelling ability of snake.

Does snake really smells? 

Most snakes have an excellent sense of smell, in part to make up for their poor eyesight and limited hearing.Snakes do their best sniffing, not with their conventional nose (though they do smell through their nostrils, too), but with a pair of organs on the roof of their mouths called the Jacobson's or vomeronasal organ.To smell through their mouths, snakes rely on tongue-flicking.

And their tongues are specially adapted to stay on the trail of that "interesting" odor. Snakes and lizards have forked tongues, some more extreme than others. And when they flick their tongues, each of the pair of tines on the "fork" picks up odor chemicals either from the air or the ground.

When snakes retract the tongue back into their mouths, those odor molecules somehow make their way into the vomeronasal organs, or a "nose within a nose”.. The bulb-like vomeronasal organs are located above the roof of the mouth and open into the mouth through a pair of tiny holes in the palate.

Although phenol is being used in some places in Asia &  Africa as a “snake repellent”, the only possible effect it might have is causing burns to the animal’s skin, though this seems unlikely. In truth, no chemical has ever been found to be very effective in deterring snakes. Carbolic acid or phenol is poisonous to anything whether it be mammal , human or snake.