European venomous snake commmunity in shock.

[Graeme]

My heartfeld condolences hotherps. It must be especially hard for you and Lukes family right now. My prayers are with you.

[Dendroaspis_bastian]

Damn that is unusual. Sorry to hear that. King cobras are not known for causing heart attacks so it does seem like a freak accident. So sad.

Yeah but they do have very fast acting venom and produce huge amounts of it...I personally know someone who died 15 minutes after a bite from a king and have read plenty of documented accounts of people dieing 20 minutes after bites..Just last year their was a famous snake catcher in India( called the Steve Irwin of India) who died almost immediately after a bad King Cobra bite.

Very sad day for reptile keepers everywhere..Rip Luke

WoW, you amaze me at every turn. So did the guy die or not? because "died almost" is not dead. Show me your documented cases of 20 minute deaths after O. hannah bites? Personally, I think your "15 minute death story" is fictional that you made up. The proteins in the venom of O. hannah are of very high molecular weight and the toxicity is low. Average bites produce 420 mg of venom (dry weight) according to Engelmann and Obst (1981). The lethal human dose for the species is almost 400 mg.

As seen here, mortality is very rare for both the Indian cobra and the King cobra: http://www.tanngethong.com/toxins_from_ ... onous_.htm

Only D. polylepis and O. scutellatus have venoms which can produce death in such times. No other snake can cause death in less than 30 minutes.

The reason I am following your posts in particular is because I saw a post of yours that was completely inaccurate. Looking at your post history it seems like you make up a lot of stuff.

[RedGhecko]

There are people on SA Reptiles that knew Luke, and I posted this so that their thoughts and prayers might be with his loved ones during this awful time. Out of respect for a fallen fellow enthusiast, please don't turn this into a debate, healthy or otherwise.

Please, lets stick to this rule.

So sad to hear this, he was a good man. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and his beloved ones.
R.I.P. Luke

[Bushviper]

Dendroaspis -bastian please refrain from making personal attacks.

When the person says "died almost immediately" then it means they died and it was almost immediate.

Reports after snake bites are notoriously under reported and even in SA there have been deaths from a snouted cobra and a puff adder when the victim died in less than 20 minutes. Both cases are recorded from Transvaal snake park. The one victim was Paul Olsen and the other was a girl who's name I never got and she died in the 70's. Her bite was believed to be an intravenous injection from a puff adder in her calf. There is also one case of a Cape cobra bite in PE where the victim climbed out of the pit a few minutes after being bitten and collapsed on the ground and being pronounced dead.

[Dendroaspis_bastian]

Dendroaspis -bastian please refrain from making personal attacks.

When the person says "died almost immediately" then it means they died and it was almost immediate.

Reports after snake bites are notoriously under reported and even in SA there have been deaths from a snouted cobra and a puff adder when the victim died in less than 20 minutes. Both cases are recorded from Transvaal snake park. The one victim was Paul Olsen and the other was a girl who's name I never got and she died in the 70's. Her bite was believed to be an intravenous injection from a puff adder in her calf. There is also one case of a Cape cobra bite in PE where the victim climbed out of the pit a few minutes after being bitten and collapsed on the ground and being pronounced dead.

Yes, I know a lot of snakebites aren't reported in a lot of places in Asia and Africa (but we have data on untreated bites from venomous snakes and most are very low). Only the black mamba and coastal taipan had mortality rates of 100% before antivenom, well this is what is reported, anyway. The cases you mention are exceptional cases, often they are intravenous bites. I'm not denying the fact that certain snakes can drop people in 20 minutes flat (black mamba, coastal taipan). Most Asiatic cobras (yes, including O. hannah) are not snakes of that magnitude (yes, it can grow to 18 ft, delivers about 400 mg of relatively low potency venom, yeah it's the big bad "king", that's all fine and dandy - but facts speak for themselves). In fact, O. hannah mortality rates are very low (in untreated cases) and you can totally forget about an Indian cobra dropping someone in 15 minutes, unless the hit was IV. It just doesn't happen that quickly. Typically, symptoms of a cobra bite don't begin to manifest until 15 minutes after a bite. That is the usual, that is what is often seen. These exceptional cases are rare. I'm not attacking yoson10, I am just saying that I don't believe his claim of "knowing someone personally who died of a O. hannah bite in 15 minutes". That's all.