Venom Toxicity Comparison Among Thailand Snakes
Venom Toxicity Comparison Among Thailand Snakes
Here is a chart of venomous snake venom LD50 ratings for subcutaneous injections of mice with venom. LD50 is a scale that means a 50% death rate occurs after injection into mice of specific amounts of venom per kilogram.
If the LD50 is for a snake species it means it takes just 1 mg of venom per kilogram of mouse, to kill 50% of the mice it’s administered to.
Please keep in mind that LD50 doesn’t mean anything to you if you were just bitten. You can die from the bite of any venomous snake if you are allergic to the venom and your body goes into shock.
Why is the LD50 scale not very important to you?
The LD50 experiments are done using one of four main injection methods of venom into mice: Subcutaneous, intraperitoneal, intramuscular, and intravenous (into veins). Dr. Fry, a noted herpetologist states that the subcutaneous injection is the most applicable to most actual snake bites, so we show that here.
The snake that bites you might hit a vein. It might go deep into the muscle (Russell’s Vipers, King Cobras). It might bite through the wall of your abdomen. Every bite is different!
Each bite is different too in the amount of venom delivered. A king cobra that gets a good bite in can kill you in 8 minutes – which is what happened to a young Thai at a snake show in southern Thailand. I know his brother and the story was related directly to me.
Bites can be dry – or, venomless – resulting in no envenomation at all.
Every bite is different – please keep that in mind. Note that the most deadly snake in Thailand, the one causing the most deaths each year, is the Malayan Pit Viper. See how inefficient it’s venom is versus the banded krait? There are just a lot more Malayan Pit Viper bites each year.
If you have any questions please ask them in the forum. Thanks, Vern.
Apparently, they removed it. So did venomdocs.com. Wonder why everyone is removing the LD50 charts. I’ll bet it has something to do with nobody wanting to attempt to keep them updated. There are experiments going on all the time which provide new data and some of it conflicts with the old.
Let it suffice to say that Kraits, Cobras, Coral, and Viper snakes in Thailand can all kill you. Do take great care not to get too close to one. Never purposefully aggravate a snake.
Verry pleased to find your sight. I dont know how to as you say link the sight i am not very computer savy. I live outside of Phitsanulok on a farm. I came accrost a snake that looked something like the snake you said you put in a jar for further study. You said it was unidenterfied as of now. If you ever find yourself up this way stop in and ill put you up for a while.
Verry interesting sight Thanks.
Thanks man. There is a kukri snake – the inornate kukri that looks VERY much like the snake I caught here in the south. If it is the same snake, it’s in a very different place than it was ever found before. My scale counts said it was a different species…
Hello Vern,
Which LD50 table is best? It seems every source I look at is different for the same snakes.
Thanks.
Yeah, good question. Bryan Fry removed the one he had on his website. You’d have to look at where each bit of data came from, and make a guess about whether the researchers knew exactly what they were doing or not. There are different sized snakes used, different ages… King Cobras, for instance, were found to have extremely potent venom while hatchlings and juveniles – more like krait strength. Adults test much less strong.
It’s really a crap-shoot…