Black mamba may provide new painkilling drugs

Are these snakes easy to breed in captivity, or will there be a gold rush to collect them from the wild?
 
nanoboy said:
Are these snakes easy to breed in captivity, or will there be a gold rush to collect them from the wild?
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It doesn't sound like collecting the snakes themselves would do people any good. As far as I can tell from the scientific paper and the media reports it sounds like no drug has actually been synthesized yet, just the discovery of a promising drug precursor. Idiots who go out and get the actual snake are likely to end up dead.
 
DavidBrown said:
It doesn't sound like collecting the snakes themselves would do people any good. As far as I can tell from the scientific paper and the media reports it sounds like no drug has actually been synthesized yet, just the discovery of a promising drug precursor. Idiots who go out and get the actual snake are likely to end up dead.
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Not necessarily! I saw a doco recently about a thriving business in India of capturing cobras to extract their venom. The snakes were released back in the wild after - or maybe they just did it for the benefit of the cameras.
 
nanoboy said:
Not necessarily! I saw a doco recently about a thriving business in India of capturing cobras to extract their venom. The snakes were released back in the wild after - or maybe they just did it for the benefit of the cameras.
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There's a big difference between cobras and mambas, especially the black mamba. You really need to know what you're doing if you want to fool with them. They are much faster than a cobra, and strike much faster. And they're deadlier (except for the King Cobra).

There should be enough in captivity around the world for antivenom production to supply a little extra for research.

:p

Hix
 
Hix said:
There's a big difference between cobras and mambas, especially the black mamba. You really need to know what you're doing if you want to fool with them. They are much faster than a cobra, and strike much faster. And they're deadlier (except for the King Cobra).

There should be enough in captivity around the world for antivenom production to supply a little extra for research.

:p

Hix
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Ah ok. Well that makes sense then. Note to self to never try to grab a black mamba by the tail, I could take a risk with a cobra. :D
 
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