Greg,

To answer your question, it may be more on the ignorance side. I am no scientist, nor a venom researcher. My main point is that posting topics like this do far more harm than good. One may interpret that bite as a very harmful envenomation and want to ban hognose. They want to ban everything these days. No need to feed their fire.

I agree that hognose snakes do commonly bite and a small percentage have reactions to their saliva. These reactions are just allergic reactions and not true envenomations. Whether their saliva contains toxins or not, maybe I shouldn't make statemens without a PHD to back it. I am sure if one examines the saliva of every North American colubrid, they may find the same properties they consider venom in hognose in other non fanged harmless species. My point was simply that they don't inject venom from a gland causing a typical envenomated bite.

On venom, while I am by far no expert on all the snakes you mentioned, I am pretty sure boomslangs have groved fangs conected to venom glands. Everyone envenomated by a boomslang typically has the same reaction. Most hognose snake victims have the same reaction which is nothing more than a couple of holes in their skin. A small percentage have allergic reaction. I don't think you can compare the bite, venom, or venom delivery system, but I may be wrong.

On their fangs, whether the toad popping theory was debunked or not, they are teeth, they are serrated, and they do pop toads. I've witnessed this myself. Yes, they do move independantly and these snakes do eat other things like other amphibians, fish, and rodents that don't puff up. They move independantly to aid in getting these things down the hatch. They are also designed to do a good amount of damage and to keep things from escaping.

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