Evolution bites:venom arms race

[chimpkin]

Basically, our local snakes are like this: don't do anything really stupid and they won't kill you. Coral snake bites are so unusual that the U.S. maker of antivenin went out of business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivenom

So I had no idea that poisonous snakes were a far bigger killer than cholera in the third world:

Up to 5.5 million snake bites cause up to 125,000 deaths a year

versus the death toll for cholera:

...178,000 cases of cholera cause 4000 deaths

But it's no big surprise to me that once bit, anti-venom is financially beyond the reach of most people...I seem to recall hearing that it runs about $1000 here...and probably not much cheaper elsewhere.

But it gets worse:
Apparently, there's been evidence found that snake prey animals are developing some immunity to venom...and the snakes are ramping up toxicity to compensate:
(from the BBC article linked below)

Dr Darin Rokyta of Florida State University, Tallahassee, US and colleagues found that all these genes in the eastern diamondback rattlesnake are undergoing "positive selection", the first study to show such a change.

We're not part of this evolutionary arms race. The snakes will just bite us to defend themselves. But the end result is we'll be more likely to die from bites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9401000/9401974.stm

(Hmm...considering that, according to the above-linked wikipedia page, there's only one antivenin-making facility in the U.S., maybe that's a business I should look into...keeping and milking poisonous snakes?:bugeye: I just had better make them really nice habitats that they like a lot and can't get out of!)