Wow look what I caught

Yeah, I'm planning on going out and getting a venomoid right after I castrate myself with a dull spoon, sautee my testes in a fine white vinegarette, and serve them up at the buffet I'll be setting up at Tanith's igloo and ice skating party in hell. Bon appetit!

AP

Actually I did have my vet perform a venomoid operation....on a dead snake. I wanted his professional opinion on the operation, and he had never done one and would never want to do one on a live animal.

I asked him to thoroughly take apart our dead black mamba patient so that we could learn more about the anatomy for the next time we had to perform surgery on a live patient. I asked him to remove the venom glands from the dead animal and to pay special attention to the head structures, since we get so many mambas in with head trauma.

I'll be posting a more complete account of what my vet thought of this "venomoid" operation in terms of how painful and invasive it is, but here are some basic conclusions.

1. My vet was really not thrilled with the idea that anyone would want to do this to a live patient. Digging the venom gland out of an elapid's head meant going quite deep through a lot of delicate internal structures. It is not a trivial operation by any stretch of the imagination.

2. The first "venom gland" my vet removed turned out to be a small muscle that was positioned right at the base of the fang. It looked a lot like gland tissue. Keep in mind that the person who made this mistake is an experienced reptile vet who has worked for Fish and Wildlife doing surgical implants on snakes for telemetry studies. Distinguishing that small muscle from the actual gland was difficult even for a veterinarian who had some previous experience doing oral surgery on elapids.

3. Given the number of reports of fully hot snakes with obvious scars from a venomoid operation, this makes me wonder if amateurs with much less skill than a veterinarian are removing the wrong piece. Obviously it is not too difficult to get that little muscle confused with the venom gland, given that an experienced reptile veterinarian did exactly that on his first attempt.

Makes ya wonder, doesn't it?

Yeah Tanith, I read your post regarding the venomoid surgery, and I must say, that is the ONLY scenario in which I would approve of a venomoid surgery, and only because we can now see how brutal (and innacurate) an operation it really is. If an experienced reptile vet couldn't properly remove the venom glands, then a garage hack probably isn't doing a very swell job either...

I usually don't like to wish bad things to happen to people, but just once, I'd like to hear about a hacker getting nailed hard by one of his potential victims. These vermin are a disgrace to our hobby and a disgrace to the human race...some might think that's going a bit overboard, but I really do feel that way.

AP

Of course my vet did figure out where the venom gland was and how to remove it from the dead snake, AFTER pulling out the wrong structure the first time. I'm sure there is a learning curve to this. I'm also sure he would have been more careful with a live patient. This was an educational dissection and it was no big deal to just start snipping things off. The patient wasn't going to be using them any more.

My vet verified what was muscle and what was gland tissue by using a microscope and precision microsurgical tools. Garage hackers are using tools from Home Depot. I think they are more likely to make mistakes than my vet, and I also don't think they necessarily have the means to discover and correct their mistakes.

If you pull out a thingie that looks like a gland, the way you find out that it's not a gland is either by taking a biopsy slice and looking at it on a cellular level, or by the fact that the snake is still hot when you're done butchering it. The equipment my veterinarian used to make the correct determination cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 3K - about a grand for the surgery tools and another couple K for the microscope. Garage hackers have 50 cent scalpel blades and $14.95 soldering irons. I think they're going to make mistakes and I think they won't have any good way of knowing they made a mistake.

Tanith,

I agree with you 100%. I wasn't saying your vet didn't know what he was doing, you mentioned this was his first "venomoid" operation...and you're right about a garage hacker not having the equipment or the knowledge to be 100% sure he removed the right piece of tissue...I get so irrate when i see a post on a forum by some ******* defending venomoid surgery...i try not to but I'm always compelled to say something. I've probably typed the same message a million times concerning venomoids. It's amazing how someone can say they love an animal or are a herp enthusiast or whatever, then go and have that animal cut apart so they can slack off and treat it like a lap dog. Arggggghhhhh I need to go cool off, I'll be back

AP