eli5: What does it mean when people say that an animal has enough venom to kill X amount of people?

Question

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

Answer 1

Lets say you had a syringe full of venom, and someone said that that amount could kill 100 people.

That means that that amount is 100x the amount required to kill one person. So if you took that syringe and divided it equally between 100 syringes, each one could kill one (average) person.