Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm curious whether a newborn eastern diamonback rattlesnake, being so large, is able to inject sufficient venom to kill the average person. I'm sure it would cause massive tissue destruction and pain and all that, but will it kill the average person? i saw a grown eastern and it was quite impressive and I have no doubt it would have no problem killing a lot of people one after the other if it bit them all. What do you think?

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I'm pretty certain that the current answer to this is, "noone actually knows for sure". I highly suspect that the answer will turn out to be "no" when someone gets around to doing relevant experiments.

It's fairly well agreed upon that neonate snakes have more concentrated venom than adults and more of a tendancy to inject a full load of venom. This tends to get paraphrased by people who don't know any bertter as "baby snakes are more dangerous than adults", then repeated by people who should...

Even allowing for the fact that a baby rattler's head is larger in relation to it's body than an adult I think I can still safely say that a 12 inch rattler would have less than 1% of the venom yield of a 7 footer (1/(7^3) = -0.3% * 3 for bigger head = -1.0%). So, unless the neonate's venom is somewhere around 10-20 times as powerful as an adult's it doesn't seem likely to be fatal... (These are of course, very rough estimates.)

If anyone has any actual, tested numbers for LD50 of neonates vs. adults or for venom yield for neonates I would love to see them, because I've been looking for a difinitive answer to this for a while...

I heard about one experiment, but I dont know about its validity. We are not talking published works or anything, but maybe I should preform this one and see if I get the same results:

Mojaves were tested, both adults and babies. They bit into approx same sized mice which were pre-weighed. After biting the mouse, time of death was recorded. The mouse bitten by the baby died much sooner than the one bitten by the adult, but post-death weighing showed that the adult acctually injected far more venom than the baby. Does this help shed any light? Seems to show to me that babies are far more lethal even though they inject lower doses of venom. This doesnt match what Ive heard from Dr. Bush, stating that smaller snakes are far less dangerous than the large ones (not impling that they cant be lethal though).

I would have to see this repeated several times before I would put much stock in it. I've seen a 2 foot northern pacific rattlesnake bite a mouse, the mouse jump straight up in the air, come down and fall over sideways without twitching a muscle, dead in a fraction of a second. I've also seen a mouse bitten by a 5 foot taipan (no way to measure the venom, but obviously a decent bite) run around the cage for a minute before dying. I'm fairly sure this doesn't mean what it sounds like it means...

Good point, Im thinking about doing this experiment properly and publishing the results.

I'll simply say that I wouldn't want to risk it....EDBs are large, even as neonates, have long fangs and big heads (=large venom glands)....Additionally, a neonate is more likely to expend more of it's venom reserves in a defensive bite than an adult is...So even if it DIDN'T kill you, it would put you in a world of hurt to be sure....I would think that necrosis and possible amputation (or other appendage morbidity) would be a much more likely result, but due to a relatively large yield and some pretty toxic venom, a lethal bite even from a neonate is a possibility that cannot be discounted....

-Kris

With prompt, proper treatment, I would say a bite from a neonate adamanteus would be survivable. I would also say that without treatment, there is a good chance for a lethal bite.

~~Greg~~
Venomous Snakes of Florida