Decapitated Snake Bites Man Before Biting Dust

[Spazosaurus]

A man said he was bitten by the decapitated head of a rattlesnake on his property near Prosser, Wash.

Danny Anderson and his son saw the 5-foot rattler Monday evening while feeding horses.

They pinned it with a pipe and cut off its head with a shovel.

When Anderson reached down to pick it up, he said, the snake head twisted around and bit his index finger.

In the 10 minutes it took to reach Prosser Memorial Hospital, the venom spread through his body and his tongue had already started to swell.

He was treated with shots at the hospital.

A state Fish and Wildlife Department biologist said it's possible the snake had the heat-sensing ability to make one last attack -- or it may have been a reflex.


http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/13858249/detail.html?rss=dgo&psp=weird-news

[greyfox]

i've heard somewhere (in humans) after a decapitation they do have about a second or 2 where they can look around a bit, not to sure how true that really is.  Crazy stuff about this snake though, luckily all they have around here is garden snakes.

[Redlum08]

i've heard somewhere (in humans) after a decapitation they do have about a second or 2 where they can look around a bit, not to sure how true that really is.  Crazy stuff about this snake though, luckily all they have around here is garden snakes.

Garden snakes? I remember seeing Coral snakes (Red with Black and White Stripes) in my backyard in Sando.

[EmpireKing]

i've heard somewhere (in humans) after a decapitation they do have about a second or 2 where they can look around a bit, not to sure how true that really is.  Crazy stuff about this snake though, luckily all they have around here is garden snakes.

Garden snakes? I remember seeing Coral snakes (Red with Black and White Stripes) in my backyard in Sando.

dem snakes rel patriotic

[Redlum08]

i've heard somewhere (in humans) after a decapitation they do have about a second or 2 where they can look around a bit, not to sure how true that really is.  Crazy stuff about this snake though, luckily all they have around here is garden snakes.

Garden snakes? I remember seeing Coral snakes (Red with Black and White Stripes) in my backyard in Sando.

dem snakes rel patriotic

LOL, yea, tell me about it..One bite and you might as well be in Laventille about to get robbed and shot.

[Gambitt]

We only have a few poisonous species in T&T, Corals and the two mapepires. I suspect that we have (or had) another but it's not on the books. The way I see it, if you ever get bitten by a snake in trinidad you dont need to worry about if you are going to die. With the coral and one of the mapepire, you already dead. With the other, you probably wouldnt dead, you just feel like you going to dead.

But seriously, most bites on humans seem to be "dry" bites anyway, you probably wont die. And since they normally slither off as soon as they see you coming the amount of rubbish you normally have to go through to actually get bitten by one of them makes it even less likely. And before allyuh go and tell me how redlum almost dead from a coral snake, remember we have something like at least four species of false corals in T&T (they are Colubridae) and only two real corals (Elapidae) and that whole "Red on yellow ... red on black" rhyme does NOT apply to us in T&T

But hey what I know about snakes? I been bitten three times on the same finger by the same rainbow boa in as many weeks.

[TrinireturnofGamez]

 I'd imagine with my knowledge of Bio.. even if you just have the  head and part of the neck , you still have enough oxygen and energy to remain conscious and move about for awhile before you shut down .   

  See lots of snakes by me near a patch of forest ,  kill them by pouring scalding water over them ,  only a couple have the coral snake colouration but you never can be too safe.

 You don't really see people dying from snake bites in Tdad so i'd imagine it isn't a big issue .
   

[New Era Outlaw]

I've heard stories about snakes being able to bite long after they're decapitated, and that such a process is a reflex action, if anything, which is why the experts often advise to stay far away from a snake's head, even if it has been cut clean off. I believe you'd have to wait a few hours until it is totally dead before making a move, because, even though its body is gone, the venom is not.

Such knowledge isn't all that common, though, so I don't really fault the guy for that too much. At least he survived, and he'll know better next time.

[Gambitt]

Actually it's not hours, it's days if you want to be safe. Not because of reflex actions or anything like that, though. Its a case of the venom being stored in the head, and you being possibly unlucky enough to step on the head, pierce your foot with a fang and compress the head enough to envenomate yourself. Think of it as a full syringe lying on the floor in a crack house.

TrinithereturnofGam, you really shouldnt kill off all the snakes in your area, unless you like the idea of leptospirosis, which AFAIK kills more people in T&T than snakes do. Better to get familiar with the three (though I suspect that there's a fourth) venomous ones, so you can steer clear. (They also happen to be the ones NOT protected by law. The law probably figured they didnt need it's help.)

The majority of snakes in T&T have a bad rep for no reason at all. They eat other pests, keep us from dropping dead on a regular basis, usually run away when they see us coming. In all the time I've wandered around in the bush (real bush, not empty lots or caroni swamp) I can only say I saw wild snakes maybe three or four times, and of those only once was it a venomous snake.... a mapepire.  I've smelled them more times than I've seen them.

But I usually wear steel toed boots, so I cant say that I was ever much worried about getting bitten on my feet. I figure if any snake dumb enough to stick around for 220 lbs of Gambitt to step on it, in his 5 lbs of steel toed boot, it was feeling suicidal anyways.