Tag Archives: snake venom

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Ontario's eastern hog-nosed snake

This week, I was lucky enough to handle a few live Ontario snakes during my herpetology lab course. This was quite a treat for me because, for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by reptiles, especially snakes. Unfortunately, these incredibly beautiful animals are also highly misunderstood. In Canada, they are often killed simply because they are snakes, even though they pose little or no threat to humans. The eastern Hog-nosed I am holding on the left is a species at risk in Ontario.

 

In India, certain snake species are threatened because their skin and, in the case of venomous snakes, their venom are highly coveted, despite being protected under the Wildlife Act of 1972.

Because of the growing concern over the potential loss of these precious herps, scientists have been trying to develop new methods of identifying snake species used to make the products confiscated from poachers.

Most recently, Indian scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad developed a method of identifying species of snakes from dried snake venom samples. This study, published in published the Journal of Forensic Sciences, is the first successful attempt at DNA isolation and species identification through dried snake venom.

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