Tick vaccines for different diseases such as lyme disease are in development though. For TBE they already exist.
Spiders target small prey and it's hard for their venom to kill something as big as a person. It's certainly unpleasant and can cause significant damage even when it doesn't kill, but snakes are responsible for far more deaths.
That's still a lot of people! But I was skeptical of 100,000, especially without a source.
No they are not. Said almost no-one.
These creatures contribute almost nothing to society and even if they're used to get rid of pests, there are other animals that do it better without being an extreme danger to humans or they can be safely caught and released.
But instead, these creatures just want to bite, spit or strangle you if they feel like it and in some cases really just want to kill you (because they think you will kill them first).
You cannot reason with these creatures with full of venom in their fangs even if the situation was an accident.
Animals have to contribute to society to be useful to the ecology of our planet?
> You cannot reason with these creatures with full of venom in their fangs even if the situation was an accident.
You can't really reason with any creature other than a human, and that's often spotty too!
But allow me present another opinion.
Snakes don't do things they don't have to do. They don't kill for no reason (cf humans, cats). They do what they have to do, without much emotion or fanfare. They shed their skin and don't carry extra weight. In other cultures, a snake is a symbol of wisdom, rebirth and healing (eg the rod of Asclepius).
Outside the symbolic arguments, I think snake venom does have some research use (eg blood thinners) and some would argue snakes are mechanically cool.
Just another perspecive ofc, and I respect yours.
In the end, snakes want to survive in a competitive world.
- snakes are actually cuties. And more like babies. They do not have strong fight or flight ability like mammals. If they get hurt, they go into a corner and just give up
- they're extremely misunderstood beings. When a snake is hissing, it is because it it actually very very frightened.
- their eye sight is very very bad. They detect mostly by that body heat. And they've a very hard time detecting friends vaa foes. A ball python actually curls into a ball when tensed up. The caretaker had to pet the snake to help it relax.
- most of that snakes are non venomous.
EDIT: replaced "100,000 treatable cases" with "a few million treatable cases" per https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11020954/ referenced by Lol_arco.
rsedgwick•9mo ago
Also... just because I was checking through the results of the paper to see if it was actually an interesting result: "The SHRT binder provided complete protection (100%) to mice . . . . The LNG binder exhibited comparable efficacy, completely neutralizing α‐cobratoxin but not the non-target ScNtx"
Lol_arco•9mo ago