by yoson10 » Thu Jun 06, 2013 4:36 am
Venom toxicity varies dramatically from animal to animal and often size has nothing to do with it at all.
So the fact that a BM can kill a 2000lb+ giraffe doesn't necessarily mean that it could kill a 400lb Lion (through I have seen many accounts of Lions dieing from snakebites...but they were not Mamba bites)...Different Animals can have DRAMATIC differences in how they react to venom.
Thats why those ld50 tests are completely useless for anything other than a standard lab mouse...Different animals can be vastly resistant/weak to a given venom.
For example King Cobras have killed 12,000lb Asian Bull Elephants but would struggle to kill an Egyptian Mongoose....A Meerkat could survive a snakebite that would kill a 4000lb Rhino etc etc etc.
Now as for accounts of snakes killing large animals...I have read/seen accounts of snakes killing Bull Elephants, Rhinos, Bison (killed by a snakebite in an Indian zoo), Bears, Lions, Leopards, Cheetahs etc etc etc....Snake bites can kill a huge amounts of animals....But like I said their is no such thing as the "most venomous snake"....Individual animals would react differently to different snake venoms....we would have to test every animals with the ld50 test and then add up the data to find which snake is on average the most venomous snake to all animals (and their would be plenty of animals that it wasn't that toxic to even if on average it was the most toxic to the most amount of animals)