eli5: Why do some tiny animals contain enough venom to kill thousands of humans, isn’t that just overkill?
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Evolution is a constant arms race between predator and prey. As creatures are killed by predators, eventually resistance to the venom develops…so predators have to evolve stronger venom. Go back and forth for a million years, and you have creatures like the mongoose that are nearly immune to most the venom of snakes in their habitat. But the same venom would incapacitate a human in short order.
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