One is where do the Papuan Taipans rank on the world ranking list? That has been questioned in another thread - why it doesn't appear on any of the lists?
Hi Jozz,
The Papuan taipan has what we call and LD50 (the lethal dose that will kill 50% of test animals in a given time) of 0.05 mg/kg which is just behind the Inland taipan (0.01 mg/kg) and common brown snake (0.041 mg/kg), and just ahead of the coastal taipan (0.64 mg/kg) - making it technically the third on the basis of venom toxicity alone.
Of course when it come to which is the most 'dangerous' that is a whole different issue, and one that is infinitely debatable because lots of other criteria can come into it, least of all, determining the definition of 'dangerous'...
First Aid training now teaches to wrap the bandage starting at the end of the limb? Is that correct, or should you start at the bite site? Or doesn't it really matter?
Ideally the correct way would be to start at the extremity and work up the limb - that is the current Australian Resuscitation Council recommendation from memory. The logic is that it is less likely to result in high peripheral venous return pressure - the pressure of blood returning through the veins to the heart.
In my case, this bite was on the thigh in a highly vascular area about 15 cm above the knee, and my immediate concern since we were about 25 km outside town was to get direct pressure over the bite site and stop the veno from spreading as quickly as possible - the price I paid was a very painful lower leg due to high venous blood pressure - but in my situation that was something that at the time I was willing to tolerate if it saved my life.
Is that the first time you have been bitten by one?
This is my first snake bite since 1995 - which was also a taipan bite. In total I have been bitten by venomous snakes 6 times, hospitalised on 5 occasions and have received antivenom 3 times. I have however also experienced three serious anaphylactic reactions to snake venom, and in my case that is possibly a far more serious risk than the effects of the venom per se.
Do you feel it was your fault (carelesness / loss of attention), or was this an unavoidable accident? The one that was playing up in the room looked difficult to handle?
If you work with venomous snakes and get bitten, you only ever have yourself to blame. In this case the snake was 2.4 metres long, and struck me on the thigh from a distance of about 1.5 metres away. My mistake was in under-estimating the strike distance of such a large snake.
Taipans are probably the most dangerous snake in the world to work with. They are large, fast and extremely agile in addition to having extremely toxic venom and the ability to deliver lots of it. Wild snakes are in a completely different class to long-term captive specimens, and nearly all of our work involves working with wild snakes, often in very remote areas of PNG where access to medical treatment is unlikely; hence the risks in my work are considerable.
Had I let this snake escape, I could have avoided the bite, but I made a decision to catch it, and bite was a consequence of that decision.
Cheers
David
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