Thank you.
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Those photos – especially the first one – are amazing; where are they from?
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Just as an aside, most zoos participate in genebank activities and really work at species preservation (and in the case of the San Diego Wild Animal Park, species resurrection). So, perhaps “a necessary evil”.
and on and on…
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They were just good examples by Google. Many African bush viper species change their colors while aging so the color isn’t a good way to identify the species.
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Wow, their scales are really three dimensional. I am used to smooth snakes around here.
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Planet Money coincidentally just did a show on this very topic. It turns out that research and development of anti-venom is an unbelievably slow and antiquated process, primarily because there’s no money in it. Only poor and rural people, mostly in less developed countries, die from snake bites.
There’s very little in the way of “research” happening. The whole system is just caretakers milking snakes, injecting horses with the venom, and distilling the horses’ blood. Same way it’s been done since the 19th century.
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Ours are semi smooth. The one with yellow neck dots is non.venomous (European grass snake, somewhat rare) but the other one is venomous (common European viper, quite common). We have a third one too (smooth snake, very rare and non-venomous) but it only lives in one island.
Like vernonbird mentioned, our viper is able to adjust its venom amount when biting. It’s even able to bite without venom.
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