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Posted by bgf on August 13, 2002 at 23:32:04:
In Reply to: I am definitely going to take the advice seriously because.. posted by wetceal on August 13, 2002 at 22:52:34:
We're going to be putting out series of major papers on colubrid venoms this year (first one goes out in a couple weeks). A brief synopsis is that we have found some of them to have venoms as potent as any elapid we've studied (a couple were on par with death adders or sea snakes!!!). This includes some animals that are very popular on the pet trade.
Rightly or wrongly this likely will cause a bit of a legislative storm. I predict that many of the rear fangs widely available in pet stores won't be after this.
However, I think as a general rule we've been grossly underestimating them. I've been as guilty or worse than most on underestimating them. My policy on colubrids has changed now. Any new species brought in is considered as dangerously toxic until proven otherwise. ANY COLUBRID. Some of our negative controls turned out to actually be more toxic than the ones we were trying to measure! This really woke us up. We're also testing a number of the existing viper and elapid antivenoms to see if there are any useful cross-reactivities.
Cheers
BGF
