most deadly snakes

[warp81]

surfing the old net the other day and came across this interesting read! wats every1s thoughts on this
http://members.iinet.net.au/~bush/myth.html

[mitchdiamond]

I think it says that 45 out of 1million people die in Sri lanka evry year.Many people in Sri Lanka live in poverty and hospitals might not have anti venom.

[warp81]

thats 1 thing the article doesn't take in2 consideration, how much better equiped and educated about snakes and snake bites in australia

[bredli84]

where he talks about "playing dead" being only a deterrent to humans and not other animals is BS. lots of animals will play dead, because predators such as cats will very rarely eat carrion, humans on the other hand evolved largely dependant on scavenging from dead animals.

[warp81]

keep the comments coming

[bredli84]

i didn't read the entire article, but got far enough to see the arguments about the numbers of people killed by cobras etc in asia. firstly there would be much higher numbers of people coming into contact with these snakes in asia than would probably happen in aus, there would be less effective treatment and general knowledge in the common population than in aus.\
but i have heard that these snakes are more aggresive than aussie elapids, so maybe more dangerous.
oh, and the effectivity of a venom on mice is probably fairl relevant to humans as physiologically we are very similar.

[NicG]

So there's a venomous Rough Scaled Snake in addition to the Rough Scaled Python?
(Just like the Green Tree Snake and the Green Tree Python)

I guess we're not the most inventive when it comes to names ...

[Veredus]

This article seems a little like a poorly researched rant. Correct me if I am wrong but at least in New South Wales (and likely all of Australia) all reptile species are protected by law and therefore it is illegal to kill them. This article has stated that the problem lies with the fact that it is not illegal, this is just foolish. The problem is education (to the writers credit he has mentioned this). The public needs to be educated about our snakes, the writer however seems as if he would have the danger of Australian snakes played down, this will not deter people from killing them, most people kill snakes simply because they get a kick out of it. Anyway, I thought his figures of deaths in the Middle-East, Africa and Asia were a ridiculous point for his argument.
1. Medical technologies in most of these areas are not up to scratch.
2. Many of these areas charge large sums of money that the average person cannot afford for anti-venom treatment.
3. The proximity of people to snakes per square kilometre in these areas would be quite significantly higher than in Australia, we are talking about areas smaller than Australia with significantly(emphasis on this) higher human populations. Not to mention many people in these areas handle animals irresponsibly

[Veredus]

It is also relevant to add I believe that all of the writer's sources seem to be at least 10 years old and some older than 20 years.
Anyway Im done now.

[cris]

Sounds like something a reporter would write (ignorant misleading BS).
Like why would it be safe to assume that an venoms capacity to kill a mamal would be an indidcation of how toxic it is to mamals
so much in that article is just opinion with absolutely nothing to back it up.

I think they were trying to say that alot of snakes from overseas are worse to get bitten by than our snakes here and i think that is true, but the way they go about trying to say that is very lacking in many ways.

[ando611]

He did raise a good point about Funnel Webs though. Their venom is virtually harmless to mice but very toxic to humans. Testing Snake venom on mice is not accurate, but it's probably the best we can do to measure venom toxicity, unless they test the LD 50 on primates instead.

[craig.a.c]

Originally Posted by ando611

He did raise a good point about Funnel Webs though. Their venom is virtually harmless to mice but very toxic to humans. Testing Snake venom on mice is not accurate, but it's probably the best we can do to measure venom toxicity, unless they test the LD 50 on primates instead.

I read an article a few weeks ago about funnel webs. Their venom is only dangerous to 2 types of mammels. Humans & apes, I will try and find the article.

[bredli84]

hmm, didn't know that about funnel webs (guess i should have read the entire article before getting carried away), still, a snake which has a varied diet consisting of a range of mammals and reptiles would probably have a broard spectrum venom, unlike that of a funnel web which probably (this is just a guess) only be aimed at insects.

[Hix]

Originally Posted by bredli84

hmm, didn't know that about funnel webs (guess i should have read the entire article before getting carried away), still, a snake which has a varied diet consisting of a range of mammals and reptiles would probably have a broard spectrum venom, unlike that of a funnel web which probably (this is just a guess) only be aimed at insects.

Exactly. I've been told that it's just an unlucky fluke that we are particularly susceptible one of the components in the protein cocktail Funnelwebs use as venom.

And one of those papers he quoted was over 50 years old!



Hix

[Peregrinus]

its a poorly constructed blubbering rant by someone who appears to be a barely tertiary educated individual. It contained the grammar of a 14y.o child. It also explains why its on a homepage. Finally take into account the individuals last name, what more can be said really.