seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Canada
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
It’s official: Honey badger don’t care. This “crazy nasty-ass” critter—the subject of a National Geographic documentary transformed into a viral meme through satirical overdubbing—“really don’t give a shit.” Not about snarky documentaries, not about stinging bees, and especially not about venomous snakes. Venomous snakes kill up to 94,000 people every...
Awesome research from the lab I worked in during my undergrad degree!
This may be stupid, but I'm really curious and don't know the real answer! I was always taught growing up (in Southern Arizona) that if you were bit by a rattlesnake you had to kill it and bring it to the hospital to prove what is was so you can receive antivenin is this true? Sorry if this is a stupid question I would just like to know.
Its OK it’s not a stupid question. - I think the reason it is sometimes suggested you must kill the snake that bites you and bring it to hospital is so the species can be correctly Identified at the hospital and you can be administered with the correct anti-venom.
As far as I know- Anti-venom is produced by injecting small quantities of snake venom into animals (usually horses are used I think). The horse then produces antibodies which are extracted from the horses blood and used to treat the victims of snake bites.
Antibodies are quite specific, So I think this procedure needs to be done for each species of snake in order to make a species specific anti-venom. It’s also a very expensive to produce. In some cases a single vial can costs tens of thousands of pounds…(bare in mind some patients need more than one vial to treat them too.) So administering a patient the wrong anti-venom would not only be ineffective it would also be very costly.
So the “bring the dead snake to the hospital thing” is to make sure they can get an accurate species ID. They don’t need the dead snake to treat the bite itself if that’s what your’e asking.
Not 100% sure on this though so If anybody has anything to add / correct on the topic please step in-
