Venomdoc Forums

Hawkeye · Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2003 11:58 pm Post subject: Furina sp venom

Has any work been done on the Furina sp.(Red, orange and yellow naped snakes) venoms?

I have been given a Red naped (Furina Diadema) which is Class 1 in NSW and it is supposed to be harmless to humans.

As an elapid species I thought that it would have the same spread of toxins as the other elapids and would potentially be more dangerous just small volumes.

Any work done with these animals?

Cheers Glen

Alexahnder · Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2003 9:52 pm Post subject:

cool hawks. i had my fingers crossed that i would get it- lol.

Hawkeye · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 1:17 am Post subject:

Nice try Alex..yeah I scored it and its tiny.

Will keep you up to date wth its progress.

Cheers Hawkeye

Venomdoc · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:13 am Post subject: Size does matter

Hi mate

They are elapids and have the usual soup (3FTx, PLA2, CRISP, etc.). The toxicities of the various small Aussie elapids is on par with the larger cousins. It simply comes down to venom yield. However, since these snakes are utterly unrelated to the usual suspects used in the making of the antivenom, it can get rather complicated. Glyphodon tristus (formerly Furina tristus) has very potent venom that is not neutralised by any of the antivenoms (including the polyvalent) and this species caused near lethal envenomations. Suta species are also very toxic, as neurotoxic as death adders but also quite myotoxic as well. They do not show up at all in the venom detection kits at all and polyvalent only works against the neurotoxicity, the victim has to ride out the myotoxicity as well. The venom yields are quite large too. I was on hand for one envenomation by a 20 cm Suta suta that dropped the poor bastard as quick as any snake I've ever seen. It would have been easily lethal without antivenom. No doubt about it. Scary when you consider how abundant they are and that they reach up to a meter long in the Barkly Tableland (we have caught some monsters there). We have a paper coming out on Suta venoms next year.

Cheers
B
_________________
Department of Biochemistry,
Bio21 Institute,
University of Melbourne,
Australia
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Faith can't be put in a test tube. Thats why it shouldn't be put in a science classroom.
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Faith (noun). Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence
Science (noun). The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.