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RE: most venomous cobra ?
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by Chance on May 5, 2006
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According to Dr. Bryan Fry's website venomdoc.com, the Naja with the lowest LD50 (highest toxicity) is Naja atra at 0.29 mg/kg. That is followed by N. naja (0.45 mg/kg) and N. nivea (0.72 mg/kg). I was thinking N. nivea was the most toxic, but looks like I was wrong. Just outside of Naja, Boulengerina puts them all to shame. Hope this helps. Oh, those are all subcutaneous LD50 scores, by the way. This is the most common method of envenomation and therefore the most accurate.
-Chance
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RE: most venomous cobra ?
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by SwampY on May 5, 2006
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my GUESS would be N. Melanoleuca, probably followed by Naja atra. Naja haje or Naja nivea would probably tie for third.
melanoleuca would definitely be the most dangerous to handle.. of the true cobras.
I'm just basing this on the few animals at the serpentarium/reptile shop I used to work part time for. Snakes can vary so much within their own species there may be some error based on those individual differences.
Chad Minter
http://www.envenomated.com
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RE: most venomous cobra ?
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by Chance on May 5, 2006
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I'd have to agree with Chad on the difficulty of handling assessment. Of all the cobras I've dealt with, I've only handled one melanoleuca and it was by far the most difficult to deal with. It was also the only cobra that's ever truly given me a run for my money. And with a cobra that can hit 9' with arboreal tendencies, it doesn't matter where it ranks on the toxicity scale.
-Chance
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RE: most venomous cobra ?
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by martyn on May 5, 2006
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Cheers guys i was told it was the cape cobra .
so it is naja atra then which is the most toxic cobra ?
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RE: most venomous cobra ?
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by LarryDFishel on May 5, 2006
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While the subcutaneous LD50 is probably the most useful for cobras, Naja melanoleuca is not on Dr. Fry's sub Q list. On the intravenous list it comes in first. There are many other species that are not listed and for which LD50s are not really known.
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RE: most venomous cobra ?
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by Chance on May 5, 2006
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That's true Larry. It's really quite difficult to pin down any kind of scale of true toxicity because of incomplete lists, wide ranges of toxicity among locales, wide ranges of LD50s depending on the person doing the research, etc. I'm thinking it's a pretty safe bet to say that any of the true Najas are going to be pretty close to each other. They're all opportunistic rodent/amphibian/reptile feeders, so they've had no real reason to specify venom components.
I believe one can pretty accurately suffice it to say that regardless of species, any could put you into the ground pretty quickly.
-Chance
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RE: most venomous cobra ?
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by Nightflight99 on May 5, 2006
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The variation among LD50 values has already been mentioned, but it is important to emphasize the significance of this variation when comparing such values among taxa. In addition, it should be noted that the exclusion of Boulengerina consistently renders the genus Naja as paraphyletic. The taxa contained within that genus should therefore be classified as Naja, which has been noted by several authors.
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