Quote:
Originally Posted by Lankyrob
European adders are no worse than a bee sting unless you have allergies.
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Don’t underestimate the European Adder.
Of course you are right that a bite of a healthy adult causes only minor symptoms in almost all cases. It might be more dangerous for children or older people. Most of the time a bite causes only some swelling and local pain, in a few cases it caused also a small necrosis. All of this will usually heal within a few weeks.
But there are some rare cases where the victims were not so lucky. I remember a fatal bite here in Germany about two or three years ago. A woman was bitten by Vipera berus and died from it. As far as you could read from the press releases she died not from any allergic reaction or anaphylactic shock but from the venom itself.
The venom of Vipera berus is quite potent. Because of the small size of the snake the usual amount of venom per bite is too small to harm an adult, but there are exceptions.
I found the following reference in
Jiri Valenta: Venomous Snakes – Envenoming, Therapy
New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. 2010
Dr. Valenta provides a chart comparing the LD100 of different venomous snakes for 100 g of mice. The LD100 (or CLD – certain lethal dose) is the minimum dose with 100% lethality for a certain amount of mice, here how much venom kills 100 g of mice.
LD100 for 100 g of mice
Vipera berus 0.250 mg
Compared to
Common Seasnake (Enhydriana schistose) 0.015 mg
Coastal Taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus) 0.017 mg
Indian Cobra (Naja naja) 0.024 mg
Southern Coral Snake (Micrurus frontalis) 0.250 mg
Egyptian Cobra (Naja haje) 0.400 mg
Puff Adder (Bitis arietans) 0.600 mg
Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) 1.900 mg
(Those are only some examples of his chart)
He provided also another chart about the lethal doses for a human and a maximum quantity of venom in mg of dry matter
The human lethal dose for Vipera berus is 15 mg of dry matter, the max. quantity of venom for most snakes is 10 mg, but they found some adders with 18 up to 39 mg.
So in almost all cases the bite of Vipera berus will have no or only light symptoms at all, but under the right (or better wrong) circumstances a bite might cause a serious envenomation and might end fatal.
As for the original question, I was never bitten by any venomous snake, I got some bites from my colubrids, the most recent bite was from my large male Spilotes pullatus.
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