eli5: Why do some tiny animals contain enough venom to kill thousands of humans, isn’t that just overkill?

Question

eli5: Why do some tiny animals contain enough venom to kill thousands of humans, isn’t that just overkill?

In: 356

Answer 1

I haven’t seen anyone else mention this yet, but venom can take a while to regrow in an animal. Oftentimes an animal will have the ability to control how much venom they use in each strike, but if they run out then they are left without one of their most useful tools. If you hear that, as an example that I DID NOT look up, a rattlesnake has enough venom to kill 10 people, they aren’t necessarily trying to inject all of it at once. That’s just their supply.