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psilocybe
at Tue Jun 8 10:12:25 2010 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by psilocybe ]
According to Fry et al., B. dendrophila has an extremely neurotoxic venom on par with Acanthophis. However, owing to the extremely poor delivery system, bites from this species have not been documented as life-threatening, though I've seen impressive bite pictures, which I can provide links to upon request. One bite I've seen in particular involving a 4 ft. individual (of which locality I cannot recall) resulted in impressive tissue damage, owing to the metalloprotease activity of the venom.
I only have one mangrove myself, and she's around ~6.5 feet. I've never been bitten by her, but I definitely don't want to be. When she was eating live rodents (she's been on f/t rats for a number of years now), I'd seen her incapacitate them without any aid of constriction in less than 15 seconds...death has been observed in under a minute (or at least there was no observable respiration from the rodent). It's probably not going to kill you, but it can make your day go to crap pretty quickly I'd imagine. ----- Abhishek Prasad
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