Venoms; venomous animals and antivenomous serum-therapeutics . and lives in dry places on the edges of body exhales a strong, nauseous odour ; when it is irritated,there escapes from its jaws a whitish, sticky slime, secreted byits highly developed salivary glands. Its food consists of smallanimals. Its bite is popularly supposed to be extremely noxious,but, as a rule, the wound, though painful at first, heals rapidly. Comptes rendus de VAcademie des Sciences, December 14, 322 VENOMS Sumichrast caused a fowl to be bitten in the wing by a youngindividual, which had not taken a
Venoms; venomous animals and antivenomous serum-therapeutics . and lives in dry places on the edges of body exhales a strong, nauseous odour ; when it is irritated,there escapes from its jaws a whitish, sticky slime, secreted byits highly developed salivary glands. Its food consists of smallanimals. Its bite is popularly supposed to be extremely noxious,but, as a rule, the wound, though painful at first, heals rapidly. Comptes rendus de VAcademie des Sciences, December 14, 322 VENOMS Sumichrast caused a fowl to be bitten in the wing by a youngindividual, which had not taken any food for a long time. Aftera few minutes the parts adjacent to the wound assumed a violethue; the birds feathers were rufHed ; a convulsive tremblingseized its entire body, and it soon sank to the ground. At theend of about half an hour it lay stretched out as though dead,and from its half-open beak there flowed a sanguinolent was no movement to give any sign of life, except thatfrom time to time a slight shiver passed through the hinder part. Fig. 124.—Heloderma horridum. of its body. After two hours, life seemed gradually to return,and the bird picked itself up and crouched on the ground, without,however, standing upright, and still keeping its eyes closed. Itremained thus for nearly twelve hours, at the end of which timeit once more collapsed, and expired. A large cat which Sumichrast caused to be bitten in the hindleg did not die, but immediately after being bitten the leg swelledconsiderably, and for several hours the cat continued to mew in VENOMS IN THE ANIMAL SERIES 323 a way that showed that it was suffering acute pain. It wasunable to stand, and remained stretched out on the same spotfor a whole day, unable to get up, and completely stupefied. Interesting observations on the Heloderm have been made byJ. Van Denburgh and 0. B. Wight. The saliva of this lizard wasfound to be highly toxic at certain times, and harmless at injected subcutaneo
Size: 2084px × 1199px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubject, booksubjectserpents
