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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Snakes with potent venom are often those adapted such that either their meals are few and far between, their meals are potentially dangerous to them, or both.
When potential meals are rare it is necessary that every attempt made at catching prey have a good chance to succeed, and potent venom makes that much more likely. A venom might be excessively lethal overall in order to obtain the desired rapidity of action; that prey needs to stop struggling very quickly because if it breaks free and dashes off just to die later the snake is still out of a meal.
A snake that eats rodents is exposed to the danger of its teeth, and rodent teeth are no joke. Snakes really can’t stand being chewed on by their pray for a while so they really need it dead quickly. Reducing chances of injury and increasing success rate in hunting both aid the snake, while incidentally giving them a venom which is a powerful deterrent to predators of themselves.
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