eli5: Why do snakes have such potent venom when the prey they eat are normally small in comparison?

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I’m from northern Australia and we have many snakes that can easily kill humans, cattle and other live stock. The power of these snakes venom seems overkill for what is required?

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9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It needs to kill it’s prey as quickly as possible.

If a mouse or rat takes a few minutes to die it can do a lot of damage to the snake before it dies.

So it has to be super potent so the prey dies quickly enough to not retaliate.

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