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

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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?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Generally that just means that their venom glands hold enough venom in reserve to kill that many people, at any given moment. In other words if 10mg of the venom is lethal, and they hold 1g of venom then that animal is said to be able to kill 100 people based on the volume and potency of the venom. In practice few animals would be able to deliver 100 fatal bites/stings.

I’d add that in general this number is arrived at based on the dose it takes to kill half of a cohort of lab animals, usually mice or rats, called the LD50.

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