Snakes sure have a mixed reputation. For some people, these limbless reptiles are cute little wrigglers that slither around and look cute. Some of them enjoy taking many pictures of them, and even keep them as pets!
On the other hand, others see a dangerous predator that is capable of injecting venom to a human by biting them and causing them to die of the toxins from it.
Obviously, not all snakes are venomous. In fact, of the 3000 species of snakes that exist all around the globe, only 600 of those are venomous. To shrink that down even further, only around 200 of those venomous snakes are actually able to significantly injure a human or kill them. This is why many people enjoy keeping snakes that aren’t venomous as pets.
There are some people who like snakes but fear them nonetheless due to not being able to tell the difference between the “safe” and “venomous” species, and you can’t really blame them, especially when some snakes seemingly look alike.
However, despite the miniscule chances of being bitten by such deadly snakes, the chance still exists. Here are some such snakes all around the world with such potent venom.
Black-mouthed mamba
One doesn’t necessarily think “speedy” when talking about snakes, considering that they don’t have any limbs to carry them around like most animals do. This doesn’t mean that they have to crawl as slow as a slug or a worm though, and some of them can reach surprisingly fast speeds.
The black-mouthed mamba, also shortened as black mamba, is one such snake, being able to move at around 12.5 miles per hour (or 5.5 meters per second). An average human’s speed clocks in at somewhere around 15-20 miles per hour. You would still technically be able to outrun a black-mouthed mamba on equal footing, but rarely does that ever happen, as realistically speaking, you’re more likely to accidentally step too close and enter its strike zone without noticing that there is a nearby snake, making it lash out and bite you long before you even have a chance to react by running away.
But what about their venom? Is your life in danger if you get bitten?
Unfortunately… Yes. A bit from a single black mamba can be lethal, and death can come as soon as (or even less than!) 30 minutes. To add insult to injury, the black mamba continuously bites its targets, with each bite injecting more and more of its neurotoxic venom.
Black mambas are easily spooked and can become very aggressive when frightened, which is why one must pay very close attention to their surroundings to ensure that they don’t accidentally frighten it. Thankfully, they are only found in one part of the world: Africa.
What makes it even harder to tell if a snake is a black mamba is the inconsistency of its color scheme: They can be olive, yellowish-brown, or even black, but such cases of them being black are actually surprisingly rare.
King Cobra
If the black mamba snake is a sight to see in terms of speed, the king cobra is something else when it comes to length. After all, king cobras are considered the longest snakes in the world, at least in terms of venomous snakes, because the crown for the longest non-venomous snake that also happens to be the longest of all snakes would go to the reticulated python.
Having an average length of around 10-12 feet, it isn’t unlikely for king cobras to reach 18 feet. Consequently, because of their long length, this means that their strike zone is also large to compensate, and compensate it does with a whopping 7 feet (2 meters) length, causing humans to potentially misjudge how safe they are from being bitten by a king cobra.
Thankfully, king cobras aren’t particularly aggressive, and would prefer to escape than to lash out, but make sure it doesn’t feel cornered or threatened, or it may just choose to sink its fangs into you after all.
But how strong is its venom?
The answer is very. If the black mamba can kill a human in 30 minutes or less, the black cobra’s venom can kill a fully grown elephant in just a few hours. As for humans, it only needs 15 minutes for the venom to send you six feet under. If left untreated, you have a 40%-50% chance of survival. Not so very good odds there.
King Cobras can be found in forests in India and Southeast Asia, so keep your eyes peeled when traversing these areas.
Saw-scaled viper
The saw-scaled viper’s venom isn’t actually as potent as a black-mamba’s, much less a king cobra’s, and their lethality rate for untreated bites is considerably low, being only around 10% or less even.
Yet, in terms of overall deaths, the saw-scaled viper dwarfs the amount of kills by every other species of snake combined. Why is that?
It’s simple, they are mostly found in dry but populated regions around places in Africa, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Pakistan, and India.
Couple that with the fact that the saw-scaled vipers are considerably aggressive, even more so than the black mamba or king cobra, and you have one angry snake ready to lash out at anything that pissed it off. In fact, when these snakes strike, they always do so with the intention to bite.
In other words, while other snakes have much more lethal venom inside of them, they aren’t particularly aggressive and usually only attack humans to defend themselves when they feel threatened in some way. In comparison, the saw-scaled viper is much more aggressive and bites more people, thus leading to more potential deaths, even if their venom isn’t as potent.
Yet don’t think that you can get out of the woods just because you managed to get some antivenom to treat yourself. The venom of these snakes also destroys, considering that it devastates the tissue around the bite, potentially causing people to lose toes, fingers, or even entire limbs.