How venomous snakes bite in all their deathly glory
How venomous snakes bite in all their deathly gloryBeware, you may wish to look away if you're squeamish about snake bites.'Few actions in nature inspire more fear and fascination', says Silke Cleuren of Monash University, Australia, home to some of the deadliest snakes on the planet.And these venomous reptiles have to be fast to sink their fangs into their prey before the victim even flinches, which may be as little as 60 ms when hunting rodents.Until recently, video technology was not sufficiently sophisticated to capture the deathly manoeuvres in high definition, but recent improvements have made this possible, so Alistair Evans (Monash University) decided to get to the heart of how venomous viper, elapid and colubrid snakes sink their fangs into their dinner.
Authors
- Kathryn Knight (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5190-3152)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Experimental Biology
- Published
- 2025-10-15
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.251554
- Primary Topic
- Venomous Animal Envenomation and Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00