What you have described does happen. The scenario is thought to go something like this. There is an underlying disease process that causes the snake pain or irritation in its body. The snake turns and strikes at what it percieves as the source of that pain. Snakes do have partial immunity to their own venom in some cases, but self envenomation certainly can cause some damage.

Self envenomations are also the result of a simple missed strike, where the snake is aiming at a food item or a keeper and hits itself instead. They don't seem to always figure out that they've bitten themselves and they may well hang on, chew and envenomate.

You might want to do a necropsy to see what you can learn from this case.

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