drop for drop of venom you guys have some truly nasty customers down there.....your inland taipan that you mention is the most toxic land dwelling snake by quite aways.....but its also out of however you want to rank the top 10 snakes prolly the least likely for you to get bit by cause they live in some real remote country
I think there have been a couple of bites form the Inland Taipan but nothing happen....of course that could mean the next 98 fully envenomate:D
As a side note, the fellow who first set out to get venom from the Coastal Taipan (back in the 1950s I think) to produce anti venene was bitten and died. But he managed to get the snake back to the laboratory.
The boomslang is interesting. There was a herpetologist Karl Schmidt who wrote a book in 1957, from memory Living Reptiles of the World and he died from a juvenile Boomslang bite as the book was released. I got the book as a Christmas present in 1960 when I was only 12. Apparently the Boomslang venom is extremely slow to act and there are virtually no symptoms for a couple of days and this resulted in people in Africa thinking it was not dangerous.
When it comes to comparing pit vipers and vipers to elapids I think if anti venene was available I would prefer to take a hit from a deadly elapid. Actually a good bite from a big Eastern Diamondback or Gaboon would be bad even if without venom:D
