If you are bitten by a very venomous snake or spider, what exactly happens to your body that kills you?
In: 102
In simple terms:
Your blood could thicken to the point that it cannot move, your body tissue could dissolve, it depends on which snake or spider.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-does-snake-venom-do-to-you.html
The body has a lot of moving parts, and these parts rely on the ability to communicate with one another in order to make the things necessary to live.
Different toxins do different things, but ultimately they all block some level of communication in the body. This causes necessary products to not be made, which makes the cells essentially starve.
It depends on the kind of venom, ultimately lack of oxygen to the brain most of the time if you are asking for a final cause of death.
Some cause necrosis, which may release toxic compounds into your blood stream. Some cause your blood to coagulate, leading to heart failure or oxygen deprivation. Some cause internal hemmoraging. Some cause swelling in particular organs which may toxify your blood or inhibit blood flow. Some disrupt your nervous system, and may shut down your autonomic functions.
Many exhibit some combination of those things.
The venom attacks and destroys tissues such as skin and blood, when that blood travels elsewhere it attacks more tissues and blood. Here’s a cool photo of some red blood cells after a rattlesnake bite, notice they’re spiky in appearance, rather than round.
There are actually a lot of different kinds of venom and they can kill you in different ways. Some cause destruction of skeletal muscles (myotixon), some causes destruction of the heart (cardiotoxins), some cause destruction of the circulatory system by constricting blood vessels or by making it so blood can’t clot (hemotoxins), and some cause nerve damage or paralysis (neurotoxins). So the way someone dies depends on the type of venom and the potency. For example, rattlesnakes are mostly hemotoxic. The venom of rattlesnakes and other pit vipers damages tissue around the bite. Venom may cause changes in blood cells, prevent blood from clotting, and damage blood vessels, causing them to leak. These changes can lead to internal bleeding and to heart, respiratory, and kidney failure. The bites are also incredibly painful and cause dramatic swelling. That gets worse as the effects of the venom spread throughout the body, so it is critical to get to medical care as soon as possible. With neurooxic snakes (like cobras), your body can become paralyzed. Usually people die because they can’t breath and the lack of oxygen causes the tissues in the body to die from lack of oxygen. This is also how the wandering spider venom kills people. So, how you die depends on the venom of the specific animal.
In the most simple of terms it is a combination of…
The substance inhibiting the necessary nutrients to circulate around the body (eg thickening the blood so it clots) and/or,
Inhibiting the signals that allow the body to function properly (eg neurotoxins inhibiting breathing, self regulation)
YouTube a drop of snake poison into a Petri dish of human blood. It’s fascinating and you can straight up see what it does.
ELI5: you have a shower, toilet, faucet, etc. at home transfered through pipes. It all works fine. Then one day winter kicks in and everything gets frozen. You turn on the shower but no water comes out cause the pipes are frozen.
Blood is liquid that’s transfered through your veins. Constantly flowing. When venom hits, it coagulates the blood essentially causing a blockage, so then the blood can’t flow through the veins anymore. Here’s a vid.
Effect of Snake venom on blood.
byu/WadieXkiller ininterestingasfuck
The very very very simple answer: when venom gets in your body, it messes with *something* in there to stop it from working right. Then whatever stopped working isn’t able to work, leading to problems (like death)
It depends on what bit you. Some venoms are basically blood thinners, some attach the nervous system and some eat away at tissue. There is no one answer here
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