eli5: Why do some tiny animals contain enough venom to kill thousands of humans, isn’t that just overkill?
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How evolution works is over thousands of years minor mutations occur that provide a small advantage over others of its species. For example if there was a serial killer killing only female blondes, it would be advantageous to be a brunette…. which would then create a large cluster of brown haired children.
Evolution is generally about energy conservation. Every species in the world does as little as humanly possible to reduce its total use of calories so that they become efficient creatures. This is why insects are the worlds best survivors (with very little evolutionary changes over the years) and cats are those prime mammals in every environment.
With that in mind snakes with lower amounts of venom would have died and not carried on their genes. The snakes we have today would have had to survive a lot of predators and inter-species competitors. Keep in mind, snakes have been around for 112 million years. That’s some massive animals you gotta be able to kill.
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