I’ve always been curious to what exactly this means. I may be overthinking it but like what does this refer to? Does this mean that they have can inject venom up to X amount of people before they die or run out?
In: 3
Most chemicals have an LD50 value which is what people usually mean when they say it is enough to kill you. This is the amount of chemical weight per victim weight that is necessary to kill the victim 50% of the time (this is usually specified for a rat or mouse since most people consider running this experiment on humans to be unethical.
Using statistics, we can determine the average weight of a human, and how much venom the animal injects per bite. We can then do a calculation to determine how many people they could kill.
For example:
The inland taipan (a particularly dangerous snake) has a venom with an LD50 of 0.025mg/kg (NOTE: this is for subcutaneous injection). The average inland taipan snake injects 44 mg of venom (110 mg being the record). The average adult human (globally) is 62kg.
We have all the information to say how much is required to so many people…
It will take 0.025mg/kg * 62 kg = 1.55 mg to kill 50% of average weight adult humans.
The number of lethal injections from one bite is 44mg / 1.55mg = 29.3. Since this is a 50% lethality rate, we can divide this number by 2 to yield about 15 adult humans per bite (about 50% would survive a 1.55mg injection without medical intervention).
Interestingly, the apparent estimate is 100 adult male humans per bite. I am not sure where they got this estimate, but maybe they have some evidence that the venom is more lethal for humans than it is for mice.
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