The World’s Most Venomous Snake Hasn’t Killed A Single Person

Nature is fascinating in its extremes — from the beautiful to the dangerous, it commands respect. It can also engender fear, especially when it comes to an animal’s potentially deadly power.

Still, it’s worth keeping in mind — just because an animal can be deadly, that doesn’t mean that it is deadly.

Case in point: The Inland Taipan, or Oxyuranus Microlepidotus. Native to Australia, (where else?) this snake has the most toxic venom of any land snake.

PHOTO: PIXABAY / KAPA65

However, as the Billabong Sanctuary explains: “Yet there has never been a single recorded human fatality from a bite of this snake!” That’s right — the world’s most venomous snake has killed 0 people. Why is that?

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To understand the answer, we have to understand the Inland Taipan’s habitat and diet. “The taipan is a mammal specialist. It feeds almost exclusively on mammals, which is quite uncommon,” David Penning, a biologist and snake expert at the Missouri Southern State University told Live Science.

PHOTO: FLICKR / BERNARD DUPONT

This makes it well suited for its usual prey of rats and mice. This is also why it’s so potentially dangerous to humans. However, it uses its venom mainly for hunting and only attacks larger creatures as a last resort. As powerful as it is, venom is costly to produce.

“In my experience, a huge majority of situations that I see is an individual seeking to handle the animal, and in doing so, they can get bitten,” Penning told Live Science. “But I have yet to read a news story about someone being bitten by a snake they didn’t know was there.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Bites from the Inland Taipan are rare, though they do happen. In 2017, 19-year-old snake wrangler Nathan Chetcuti from Brisbane, Australia was hospitalized after he was bitten while placing his pet Taipan in its enclosure. Thanks to a fast response from emergency services, he was able to make a full recovery, however.

Learn more about the Inland Taipan at The Australian Museum’s site here!

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