Venom and digestion

[MudBoy]

I know a lot of you guys dont like Steve Irwin as a lot of his fellow Australians dont like him but is he not the most keen herp you have ever seen??
His Zoo is just down the road from my house and I got free tickets one day so I went along to have a look and it is a GREAT day out.
I was lucky enough to have a good chat with one of the handlers at Australia Zoo and the topic came around to venom kills as apposed to fresh killed rats as I had noticed my taipans were swallowing fresh killed rats without biting them.
This very experienced young man said to me "well put it to the test" so as per his instructions I put a live rat in the cage and let it get bit them took it out and placed it in the sun beside a fresh killed rat of the same size and the difference in decompisition was amazing.
The venomated rat turned to mush in 2 days when the fresh killed rat was still in fair shape, but this was taipans, I wonder what the same test would be like with some of your more exotic snakes ???
Ok all you hot snake owners whos got rats too spare to settle an old argument??
just kidding, I just thought you may find this interesting.

Cheers

Rick.