Posted by:
Sundberg
at Fri Sep 19 00:32:54 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Sundberg ]
I'm quite sure I've also seen this information about venom glands two thirds as long as the body, but I can't remember where. I just took a quick look through some of the articles and books I have that seemed likely to contain any information and didn't find much.
The species I think I've read this about is the two Maticora sp.; M. bivirgata ssp. (Blue long-glanded coral snake), and M. intestinalis (Brown long-glanded coral snake).
I did find some information about long glands in Elazar Kochva's paper "The origin of snakes and evolution of the venom apparatus" published in Toxicon 1987, but that was about two Atractapis sp. Referring to two other articles he says that A. engaddensis may have glands reaching 8-12 cm (length of snake 50-60cm) and that 90 cm long A. microlepidota may have 30 cm long glands, ie the glands may be one third of the body length in this species.
If they can be one third of the body length (which seems somewhat excessively large to me! =)) perhaps it's not totally implausible there are species with even larger glands.
/Sundberg
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RE: "Long-gladed" snakes? - Sundberg, Fri Sep 19 00:32:54 2003