>>Wow... I´m stupefied.
>>

Imagine how we felt while finding all of this out in the lab! It was pretty mindblowing. We never expected the colubrid venoms to be like this. It was a lot of fun do find out snakes are even cooler than we thought they were Also, it freed us from the tyranny of 'no fangs, no fun'. I think its quite funny that I did my Ph.D. on taipans and now I'm playing with ratsnakes! Oh how the mighty fall! LOL!!!

One thing that needs to be stressed is that while the colubrids are by and large venomous and in many cases put out small amounts of highly toxic venom, despite this these snakes are typically 'harmless' to humans. A garter snake for example is technically venomous but from a practical point of view its venom is of trivial importance. There certainly are some medically important species but these are not in the majority. Being venomous is not automatically equal to being dangerous. The determining factor is how much venom is actually delivered, which usually is bugger all due to a number of factors.

Cheers
Bryan
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Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry
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Australian Venom Research Unit,
University of Melbourne
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Population and Evolutionary Genetics Unit,
Museum Victoria
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http://www.venomdoc.com

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