I keep hearing about how, in regards to certain types of snake and spider, “a single drop of its venom can kill scores of people.” But I’ve always wondered how scientists arrived at this measurement. It certainly can’t come from actual tests – ethics aside, it would be a logistical nightmare to divide up a single drop of venom amongst dozens of people, even with today’s technology. But it also doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that’s been made up to scare people into avoiding the venomous creature, because just saying that you would die a slow, agonising death if you got bitten would be enough to scare people off. So how do they get this measurement?
In: Biology
The simples way I can think of is diluting the venom and giving it to mice… With this, you have the yeld necessary to kill a certain mass, the you adjust it by the corporal mass
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