Quincy
Posted : 3/12/2008 10:57:32 AM
DumDog
sounds a bit like coral snakes. from what i have heard few people have died from those despite the venom being so lethal.
but that has more to do with the fact that coral snakes have fangs in the backs of their mouths and have to chew in order to poison you.
From what I have read their fangs are not like coral snakes in the backs of their mouths, but fixed fangs at the front of the jaw.
Maybe Australian people and their dogs might prefer to go for walks into snakes habitats in the cooler parts of the year when snakes hibernate, besides when it's cooler they might enjoy longer walks and when it's cooler as this may avoid encountering things like heaps of flies and mosquitos. By the way the human population of Australia is about that of California.
And some more information included below from this link:-
http://www.billabongsanctuary.com.au/aussie_animals/eastern_brown.html
Just how Dangerous is It?
The venom of the Eastern Brown Snake is rated as the second most toxic of all snake venoms in the world, next only to that of Inland Taipan (which is also a native of Australia).
The venom of an Eastern Brown Snake contains a cocktail of poisons. The most powerful ingredient is a neurotoxin, which paralyses the nerves of the heart, lungs and diaphragm, suffocating the victim. It also contains a powerful procoagulant.
The accepted standard for comparing the toxicity of snake venoms was devised in the 1970’s by the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory (CSL) in Melbourne. Tests were done by injecting live mice, and measuring the amount of venom required to kill 50% of test animals, yielding a number called LD50 (or Lethal Dose 50): the lower the number, the more toxic the venom The LD50 of the Eastern Brown is 0.053 mg/kg. Expressed in other units, a single bite could kill nearly 200,000 mice.
The actual number for any particular snake doesn’t really mean all that much (except to all those mice!): dead is dead. The relative danger of venomous snakes depends on many other factors, such as the amount of venom injected, the length of the fangs, the sensitivity of the victim to the toxin, and the likelihood of getting bitten in the first place.
Brown Snakes have relatively short fangs compared to some other non-Australian species such as cobras and vipers. Although they will bite repeatedly if provoked, they inject only a small amount of venom -- about 4 mg (less than one-thousandth of an ounce). This is more than enough to kill a person, but they will not deliberately seek out and bite humans. There is no advantage to attacking an animal so much larger than itself.
Defensive bites are often ‘dry bites’; that is, no venom is injected.
Despite being home to so many species of venomous snakes, Australia records only about 5 deaths from snake bite per year. More deaths are caused by horses, or even bee stings, than by snakes.
By contrast, venomous snakes such as cobras and vipers cause many thousands of deaths per year in the very densely populated continents of Africa and Asia.
Most of the lethal snake bites recorded in Australia have been from Eastern Browns. They have learned to hunt rats and mice around farms and cane fields, and so tend to come in contact with humans more often than other venomous snakes.
Most snakes bites occur when someone is trying to kill or catch a snake.
Studies in the lab and in the field have shown that a Brown Snake prefers to retreat or remain stationary if approached by a human, and will bite only if it feels threatened.
So, although the Eastern Brown Snake is indeed highly venomous, a common-sense approach to this and other snakes means that man can share their environment without feeling threatened. If we leave them alone, they will leave us alone.
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