Each year, there are approximately 5.4 million snakebites worldwide, of which up to 2.7 million are from venomous snakes. Poisoning caused 138,000 deaths, with 400,000 sequelae or disability. There is no doubt that India, as the second most populous country in the world, is inevitably in conflict with wildlife.
Over the past 20 years, nearly 1.2 million people have lost their lives to snakebites. India continues to have the highest number of snakebite deaths in the world.
According to Wildlife SOS, an Indian wildlife organization, India is home to about 100 species of venomous or slightly venomous snakes. An estimated 46,000 people die each year from snakebites. Four times as many people are disabled. But it was in such a snake-infested India that a strange thing happened.
Recently, an 8-year-old boy in India was playing near his house when he came across a poisonous cobra he didn't know. The snake wrapped its body around the little boy's hand and bit it hard.
Therefore, the painful little boy also bit the cobra twice in retaliation. And it was these two mouthfuls that made the cobra die after struggling a few times. On the contrary, the little boy had no symptoms. But isn't this snake poisonous, how can it not even bite a little boy?
Cobras are known to be venomous, and they all have similar venom delivery devices, including a set of fangs, venom ducts, a pair of accessory glands, and a pair of retroorbital glands. Venom, on the other hand, is produced in the gland and is composed of a variety of proteins, enzymes, anticoagulants, neurotoxins and other substances, which is a complex mixture.
And the amount of venom ejected by the cobra at one time reaches a staggering 175-300mg, far exceeding other venomous snakes. In addition, poisoning a person does not need so much, only 20-50mg is enough, so people are especially afraid of cobras.
In general, their venoms can be divided into three main categories, namely neurotoxicity, hematotoxicity, and cytotoxicity:
Neurotoxic venoms can harm the brain and nervous system;
Hemotoxic venoms can disrupt blood clotting, thereby affecting the cardiovascular system, and also leading to organ degeneration and tissue damage throughout the body;
Cytotoxic venoms cause severe pain by damaging tissues at the molecular level.
Therefore, those bitten by cobras, once not treated in time, will die within 24-48 hours of being bitten, of course, if the dose of toxins injected is large, or the location of the wound is close to the point, there are also deaths within 24 hours.
And if the bite is a king cobra, even 30 minutes may be cold. Even if they are rescued, they will be left with serious sequelae, either disability or organ failure.
But since the poison of snake venom is so strong, why didn't the little boy react at all? Could it be that the snake did not release poison? Don't say, it's true.
When the boy's family took him to a nearby hospital, doctors there said there was no venom at the bite. This leads to another question, why don't poisonous snakes bite people? Could it be a broken tooth?
In fact, there are many such cases, according to statistics, 20-50% of bites have no venom, which is called "dry bite" by researchers. Dry bite behavior is unexpectedly related to the age of the snake. Often the older you get, the more you love to do it! Therefore, the phenomenon of dry bite cannot be simply attributed to the wrong delivery of venom caused by pathology, but may be intentional by snakes.
First of all, the metabolic cost of venom is high. In general, secretory cells trigger protein resynthesis only after the venom is excreted. It peaks on days 3 to 7 of the venom replenishment cycle, and remains active thereafter for up to 30 to 60 days.
And most venoms take time to exert their toxic effects, so large predators, such as humans, may not be able to stop them immediately. At the same time, no venomous snake is big enough to consider humans as prey. Therefore, the main reason why humans are bitten by snakes is that snakes are protecting themselves from possible human threats.
And the older you get, the wiser you are. So the older the snake, when it realizes that it is threatened, it is more accustomed to taking a dry bite as a warning. This saves venom for later hunting, and gives them enough time to escape.
However, what Cobra did not expect was that this time it encountered "hard stubble". Originally, I just wanted to warn and buy myself time to run, but I didn't expect that the 8-year-old boy immediately opened his mouth and bit back, accidentally taking his life.
All in all, because humans are too large to be considered prey by venomous snakes, venomous snakes may not always release venom when biting, as they retain this weapon that consumes a lot of metabolism for predation.
However, dry bites may also cause clinical manifestations similar to nonvenomous snake or other animal bites, including inflammation and infection, as well as signs of anxiety such as tachycardia and tachypnea. And injuries induced by venom may not occur immediately after poisoning. So once bitten, decide not to miss the optimal treatment time because there are no adverse effects.