what does "you are as nothing before their toxic might" mean? am i having a stroke?
it means that by venom alone, the Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake is in the top ten most venomous snakes! they’re packing a lethal neurotoxin compound that can kill an adult human quickly.
HOWEVER- what keeps the Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake off the lists of the world’s most dangerous snakes is their behavior! like the Gaboon Viper, these sea snakes are very chill and rarely interact with humans in the first place. there are even reports of children picking them up on beaches and handling them without angering the snake. (but don’t do that DON’T DO THAT DON’T DO THAT)
and when they do bite in self-defense, the Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake uses very little or no venom! this is because as the most aquatic snake in the world they’re basically marine animals at this point and it’s absolutely crucial for them to save their venom for hunting and extreme self-defense purposes (read: if attacked by shark) so they absolutely won’t waste it on the common beach chimpanzee who insists on touching them with its soft meaty paws.
but still, LEAVE THEM BE, and they’ll leave you be!
(also they have horizontal pupils which just looks really cool on a snake)
OP definitely knows this but I want to point out to followers how these snakes are practically “desert” adapted because they have no way to drink saltwater. Just like a snake in the blazing Sahara desert they have to wait for the opportunity to drink fresh rain!!
and drinking rainwater when you live in the ocean is actually much easier than it sounds! since rainwater is fresh water and doesn’t have salt in it, it’s automatically less dense than seawater. because of that density difference, when it rains on the ocean the fresh rainwater just kind of puddles into a thin layer on the surface for a while instead of mixing in with the ocean right away, like those old Liquid Density Science Kit Experiments you did when you were a kid.
and that’s when the Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake swings into action!
they scoot to the surface and carefully drink from the freshwater rain layer, avoiding the salty ocean water all together.
now, this is kind of a stupid-but-functional workaround for them BUT it has some unintended consequences! all species of sea snakes are native to the tropical south pacific/indian oceans, but have you ever wondered why there are no sea snakes in the caribbean?
you see, just like the land, not all ocean is rained upon equally! there are deserts in the ocean that receive very little rainfall, and sea snakes cannot cross them without dehydrating and dying. and it just so happens that their natural range is pretty much surrounded by these sea-deserts....
so until the Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake learns how to drink ocean water, they’re stuck where they are due to evolution’s halfassed nonsense!
