ArticleToxins2020
Fangs for the Memories? A Survey of Pain in Snakebite Patients Does Not Support a Strong Role for Defense in the Evolution of Snake Venom Composition.
Article in Toxins, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparative venomics suggests an evolutionary adaption of spider venom from predation to defense.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Prickly Defenders: A Review of Venomous Sea Urchins (Echinoidea).Marine drugs · 2025Review
- The biology and toxinology of blunt-nosed vipers.npj biodiversity · 2025Review
- Unpredictable aggressive defence of the venomous snake, Crotalus ravus, towards predators and humans.Biology open · 2025Article
- Antivenom Administration After Rattlesnake Envenoming in Arizona Does Not Directly Diminish Pain.Toxins · 2024Article
- Article
- Venom trade-off shapes interspecific interactions, physiology, and reproduction.Science advances · 2024Article
- Understanding the pain experience of lionfish envenomation.Pain reports · 2023Article
- Venom phenotype conservation suggests integrated specialization in a lizard-eating snake.Toxicon : official journal of the International Society on Toxinology · 2023Article
- Selective sensory nerve blocks for effective pain management in the emergency department for a term pregnant cobra snake envenomation patient.Indian journal of anaesthesia · 2023Article
- Review of the Mechanisms of Snake Venom Induced Pain: It's All about Location, Location, Location.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Combined Molecular and Elemental Mass Spectrometry Approaches for Absolute Quantification of Proteomes: Application to the Venomics Characterization of the Two Species of Desert Black Cobras,Journal of proteome research · 2021Article
- Promoting co-existence between humans and venomous snakes through increasing the herpetological knowledge base.Toxicon: X · 2021Article
- Article
- Article
- Special Issue: Evolutionary Ecology of Venom.Toxins · 2021Article
- Convergent evolution of pain-inducing defensive venom components in spitting cobras.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Armed stem to stinger: a review of the ecological roles of scorpion weapons.The journal of venomous animals and toxins including tropical diseases · 2021Review
- From molecules to macroevolution: Venom as a model system for evolutionary biology across levels of life.Toxicon: X · 2020Article
- Ultrasound-guided selective peripheral nerve block for the snakebite pain management in the emergency department: Our experience.Turkish journal of emergency medicineArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animals use venoms for multiple purposes, most prominently for prey acquisition and self-defense. In snakes, venom composition often evolves as a result of selection for optimization for local diet. However, whether selection for a defensive function has also played a role in driving the evolution of venom composition has remained largely unstudied. Here, we use an online survey of snakebite victims to test a key prediction of a defensive function, that envenoming should result in the rapid onset of severe pain. From the analysis of 584 snakebite reports, involving 192 species of venomous snake, we find that the vast majority of bites do not result in severe early pain. Phylogenetic comparative analysis shows that where early pain after a bite evolves, it is often lost rapidly. Our results, therefore, do not support the hypothesis that natural selection for antipredator defense played an important role in the origin of venom or front-fanged delivery systems in general, although there may be intriguing exceptions to this rule.
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