I am tempted to take photos of the next "venomoid" procedure to post to show evidence of what I am saying, but I am concerned that this will basically amount to a do it yourself venomoider lesson. That is not something I want to make available for the obvious reasons.



There seem to be two ways to tell the difference between the small muscles that attach to the base of the fang and the actual venom gland. One is by isolating the structures with precision microsurgical instruments and taking a biopsy to examine under the microscope so you can see the difference between muscle tissue and gland tissue on a cellular level. The other is by finding out that the snake is still hot after you butchered it and removed the wrong piece. There is no clear visual differentiation between the gland and the structures right next to it.



The equipment my veterinarian used to make the determination of what was muscle and what was venom gland cost about 2-3K (good German microsurgery tools, good hospital microscope). Garage hacks spend fifty cents on scalpel blades and $14.95 on cautery tools from Home Depot. I think they are going to be making mistakes, and I think they do not have a good way of finding out they have made a mistake. I know that some of these mistakes are running around envenomating mice.



Assuming you can make one 100% positive determination initially of which structure is the venom gland in one species, you should be able to find the same structure again in the same kind of snake. But anatomy can differ between species, and you still need to make the original determination without error.



One interesting point is that removing a muscle instead of the gland may render a "dry bite" a lot more likely, because you might have snipped one of the muscles that expresses the venom gland during a bite. So you could have a snake with intact glands and a missing muscle that would deliver mainly dry bites unless it did enough chewing or head motion to express the gland mechanically.

[ Show Entire Thread ]