From an article on CNN Website in Travel Section today, December 4, 2002 regarding smuggling in Alaska airports:
“Inspection officer Mike Kiehn pulls a stuffed cobra, poised as if ready to strike, off a top shelf. The item was taken from a tourist coming from Thailand. “When the animal is killed, the venom becomes solidified, but if you punctured yourself it could be lethal,” Kiehn said.”
Wow - I really always thought when the critters were dead, the danger was gone…
So is this true? If you had a stuffed dead rattlesnake, you could cut yourself years later and die? What is the shelf life of dead snake venom? Would the same be true of scorpions? Bees? Spiders?
I don’t think venom “keeps” indefinitely. Someone will probably be along soon with a definitive time limit for that. However, immediately a venomous snake is killed, after and for some time thereafter, the venom is still venom. If you get any of it into a cut or puncture you’ll get a reaction.
Well the danger of being bitten is gone but not the danger of the toxin. People die from eating ill-prepared fugu (blowfish) all the time. Toxins, while usually produced by living organisms, are not living organisms themselves. They are just molecules.
Ah ha!! This site give some info onshelf life for snake venom. The typical number seems to be 3 years if stored between 2-6[sup]o[/sup]C and in the dark. At room temperature in the light I suspect it is measured in days.
We kids had killed a rattlesnake and cut the head off (we knew it was dangerous), and the body was still writhing as reptiles do. It turned out that if you touched the body anywhere, it would whip around as a reflex and strike at you with its headless neck.
my story.
when us kids were living in Malaysia, we stumbled across a dead sea snake on the beach. we knew that the sea snake was very dangerous and even tho it was dead, we kept our distance.
One of us poked it with a sharp stick…
and baby snakes came out its butt- ALIVE!
its was the freakest thing!
Small quibble here, KidCharlemagne. Everything is “just molecules,” except of course elements like iron or sulphur, etc which are “just atoms.” According to Britannica: “Venoms are mixtures of toxic enzymes and various other proteins that act on the body in different ways.” I suspect that there are bacteria around that can break those enzymes and proteins down in short order and come back for more.
From what I know of toxicology, I suspect the breakdown products could be more deadly that the original toxin. And I suspect the field of studying how much toxicity old snake venom retains is woefully underserved.
Good idea! If you really need to handle the stuff, protective rubber gloves are available. If I had to do it I’d wear two pair. Or mayber hire someone.
I was using “just molecules” loosely to contrast living vs. non-living. While molecules make up organisms the reverse is not true. Certainly not a great term but not completely misleading in the context of what we were speaking about. I suppose that was why it was a “small quibble.”
Many organisms produce toxins. The Clostridium botulinum bacteria produces the botulinum toxin, pufferfish and venomous snakes produce neurotoxins, etc. etc.
