baby snakes venom

[chloethepython]

just wondering
is a baby snakes venom just as toxic as the adults?
thanks

 

[Jonno from ERD]

It sure is.

 

[Snake Catcher Victoria]

They just hold less of it in their little heads and the apparatus for delivering it is a lot smaller to.

 

[arbok]

how old does a snakes have to be (like say a common brown) for its snakes to be able to penetrate skin?

and also ive seen on shows/herd of snakes that have 3 fangs (2 on one side as they have grown out early) would both these fangs inject venom?

 

[chloethepython]

thanks guys
dont know about the 3 fangs though

 

[Snake Catcher Victoria]

They can penetrate the skin at any age, just depends on where they bite you, how soft your skin is ect.

 

[JasonL]

I find it funny how people think because it's small it's not as dangerous? Redbacks are much smaller, with much smaller fangs

 

[Miss_Croft]

All three fangs will inject and they supply the same venom at any age - A baby brown can bite and kill you (If it can puncher your skin).

 

[slim6y]

There was a young fellow bitten by a Taipan hatchling in Port Douglas (I think) last year - he was rushed to hospital and was treated no differently than if he had been bitten by an adult. He was 'moving it' off the foot path when it bit him.

The paper reported that the young snakes may also have less 'control' over their venom and may infact inject more than an adult (plausible???).

 

[smacdonald]

Many snakes experience an ontogenetic shift in diet, for example, eating lizards when young and mice when older. A number of studies have found that snake venom composition and taxa-specific toxicity can also change as snakes age/grow, probably due to the shift in diet. For example, young brown tree snakes on Guam eat lizards and the adult snakes eat birds. This change in diet is accompanied by a change in the toxicity of their venom, with the venom of young snakes being more toxic to lizards than that of adult snakes.

Mackessy, Stephen P., Sixberry, Nicole, M., Heyborne, William H., and Fritts, Thomas (2006) Venom of the Brown Treesnake, Boiga irregularis: Ontogenetic shifts and taxa-specific toxicity. Toxicon, 47:537-548

To summarise: I'm not aware of any studies that have shown that juvenile snake venom is less toxic than adult venom, but it wouldn't surprise me if that situation occurred in some species out there. There are studies that show that the juveniles of certain snake species have venom that is more toxic than that of the adults.

I should say that all the studies I've read have made no distinction between age and size, so you don't really know if venom changes as a snake ages or as it grows.

I was going to look at this field as part of my PhD studies until the above article was published in 2006. Stuffed my plans up completely. Not that I'm bitter about it.


Stewart