Every Venomous Snake Explained in 13 Minutes | Animals Explained

[00:00:00]One of these snakes holds enough venom in a single bite to kill a hundred grown adults.

[00:00:05]Not the cobra, not the mamba, something quieter, something hiding at the very bottom of this list. We'll get there, I promise, but none of it adds up. The deadliest venom on the planet belongs to a snake that has never killed a single human being. Stay with me and you'll understand why. We're counting through eight of the deadliest snakes alive.

[00:00:34]And the deeper we go, the more dangerous they get.

[00:00:38]The one I just mentioned is waiting at the very end.

[00:00:41]But to see why it's so terrifying, we have to start with something small.

[00:00:46]Surprisingly small.

[00:00:48]It looks harmless.

[00:00:50]You could hold it in two hands and it might be the deadliest snake that has ever lived.

[00:00:56]The saw-scaled viper rarely grows longer than your forearm, smaller than a baseball bat.

[00:01:03]Yet scientists believe it kills more people every year than any other snake on Earth.

[00:01:08]Thousands of deaths every single year.

[00:01:13]So, how does something this small do so much damage?

[00:01:17]It lives exactly where people do.

[00:01:20]Dry fields, footpaths, the edges of villages across the Middle East, Central Asia, and India.

[00:01:27]You don't go looking for it.

[00:01:29]You step near it by accident.

[00:01:32]And when it feels you coming, it doesn't slither away. It coils into a tight figure eight and saws its scales together.

[00:01:41]A dry, rasping hiss like sandpaper dragged across wood.

[00:01:46]That sound is the only warning you get.

[00:01:49]Then it strikes, faster than you can pull your hand back.

[00:01:53]Its venom doesn't just kill.

[00:01:56]It unravels your blood from the inside, stopping it from clotting, eating away at the flesh around the wound.

[00:02:03]Survivors can lose fingers, toes, whole limbs, all from a snake you could mistake for a garden hose. Small, silent, and the deadliest of them all.

[00:02:16]Now, take that little viper and scale it up several times longer and dozens of times heavier.

[00:02:25]This is the Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake, the largest and heaviest venomous snake in North America.

[00:02:33]The biggest one stretch past 8 ft, longer than a grown man lying down, and weigh around 30 lb.

[00:02:42]That's a snake as heavy as a loaded suitcase, coiled and waiting.

[00:02:47]And waiting is what it does best. It buries itself in the palmetto scrub of the southeastern United States and lets the world come to it.

[00:02:57]Pits on its face read body heat like a thermal camera, tracking the warmth of a rabbit in total darkness. Eyes closed, striking blind. But one thing sets it apart.

[00:03:11]Before it ever bites, it warns you. The famous tail lifts and the rattle begins.

[00:03:18]A dry, buzzing alarm that means one thing, stop. Back away. You're too close.

[00:03:27]Most people who get bitten ignored that sound or never heard it at all. And when the warning fails, the strike is a blur.

[00:03:35]Folding fangs sinking deep, pumping venom that turns blood and tissue to ruin.

[00:03:41]Heavy, patient, and impossible to ignore.

[00:03:46]The rattlesnake gives you a warning.

[00:03:48]This next one gives you a stare.

[00:03:51]Picture a snake that other snakes, that swallows cobras and pythons whole, venom and all, and you're picturing the king cobra.

[00:04:02]It's the longest venomous snake on Earth. The largest ever measured stretched nearly 19 ft, longer than a small car parked at the curb.

[00:04:12]But length isn't the part that freezes you.

[00:04:16]When a king cobra feels threatened, it lifts the front third of its body straight off the ground until it's looking a standing adult dead in the eye.

[00:04:26]Think about that.

[00:04:27]A snake rising to meet your gaze.

[00:04:32]Then it flares its hood, lets out a growl that sounds almost like a dog, and holds.

[00:04:38]It doesn't want to bite, but if it does, a single dose carries enough neurotoxin to kill an elephant, or bring down a grown human in under an hour.

[00:04:51]And the strangest thing about this giant, it's a devoted parent.

[00:04:56]The king cobra is the only snake on Earth that builds a nest, scraping leaves into a mound and guarding her eggs until they hatch.

[00:05:05]A killer that hunts other killers and still stops to protect her young.

[00:05:11]Towering, watchful, and born to rule.

[00:05:17]The king cobra would rather avoid you.

[00:05:20]This next one won't.

[00:05:22]Across the cane fields of northern Australia lives a snake famous for losing its temper, the coastal taipan.

[00:05:30]It can grow past 9 ft, but it's the attitude, not the length, that earns its place here.

[00:05:37]It carries the longest fangs of any Australian snake, and it does not bite just once.

[00:05:44]When it strikes, it lashes out again and again, driving a full dose of venom deep with every hit. Then snapping back before you can react.

[00:05:56]Watch how it hunts, and the strategy makes sense.

[00:05:59]It bites a rat, releases it, and lets the panicked animal run.

[00:06:04]Because the venom is already working.

[00:06:07]A few yards on, the rat drops.

[00:06:10]The taipan follows the scent and arrives at a meal that can no longer fight back.

[00:06:16]Now imagine you're the one who stepped too close. The symptoms come fast.

[00:06:21]Within minutes, your blood stops clotting, and your nerves start to fail.

[00:06:26]Before antivenom existed, almost no one survived a serious bite.

[00:06:31]Not most people.

[00:06:33]Almost no one.

[00:06:35]It isn't looking for a fight.

[00:06:37]But corner it, and it becomes the most explosive snake on this entire list.

[00:06:42]Quick, relentless, and merciless.

[00:06:45]So the taipan is the most aggressive.

[00:06:48]But aggression isn't speed.

[00:06:51]What happens when a snake moves fast enough that running simply isn't an option?

[00:06:55]Meet the black mamba, the fastest snake in the world.

[00:07:00]It can move at about 12 miles an hour, the pace of a sprinting human.

[00:07:05]Read that again.

[00:07:07]You cannot outrun it.

[00:07:08]And it's big.

[00:07:10]Africa's longest venomous snake, stretching up to 14 ft.

[00:07:16]But most people get one thing completely wrong.

[00:07:19]It isn't black at all.

[00:07:21]Its skin is a dull olive gray.

[00:07:24]The name comes from the inside of its mouth. Ink black, like the throat of a cave.

[00:07:30]Which it gapes open as a final warning, rearing a third of its body off the ground. Tall enough to stand level with your chest.

[00:07:39]The venom is pure neurotoxin.

[00:07:42]Fast.

[00:07:43]A serious bite can shut your body down in under an hour, which is why the people who live beside it gave it a second name, the kiss of death.

[00:07:53]And it doesn't strike once.

[00:07:55]A cornered mamba can land a dozen bites in seconds, each one loaded before vanishing into the grass like it was never there.

[00:08:04]Fast, fearless, and gone before you blink. If your jaw is on the floor right now, do me one favor.

[00:08:12]Hit subscribe. Because number eight, the last snake on this list, makes even the mamba look harmless.

[00:08:20]But before we reach it, look closely at the mouth of this next one.

[00:08:25]At the fangs. This snake has fangs as long as your finger.

[00:08:30]Two full inches of curved hinged needle.

[00:08:33]The longest fangs of any snake alive, folding down to deliver the biggest dose of venom in the entire snake world.

[00:08:42]This is the Gaboon Viper, a thick heavy ambush hunter from the rainforests of sub-Saharan Africa.

[00:08:49]Up close, it looks less like a snake, and more like a slab of patterned stone.

[00:08:56]But the truly frightening thing isn't the fangs.

[00:09:01]It's that you would never see them coming.

[00:09:04]Look at the forest floor.

[00:09:06]A quilt of brown and gold dead leaves.

[00:09:10]Somewhere in that pattern lies a snake nearly 7 ft long and as thick as a fence post.

[00:09:17]And your eyes slide right past it.

[00:09:21]The Gaboon Viper doesn't chase.

[00:09:23]It waits.

[00:09:25]Motionless for hours, sometimes days, until something warm wanders within range.

[00:09:32]Then those huge fangs swing forward, sink in deep, and lock on.

[00:09:38]No quick bite and release here.

[00:09:41]It just keeps its grip.

[00:09:43]By the time it lets go, a meal the size of a rabbit is already gone, swallowed whole and headfirst.

[00:09:51]And this is the part that surprises everyone.

[00:09:54]For all that firepower, the Gaboon viper is calm, genuinely placid. It almost never bites a person. But step on one by accident in the leaves where it lives, and you've just woken the most heavily armed snake on the planet.

[00:10:12]Hidden, enormous, and armed like nothing else.

[00:10:16]You couldn't see the Gaboon viper because it blended in.

[00:10:20]This next one is impossible to spot for the opposite reason.

[00:10:23]It's bright, brilliant green, and it lives where green is everywhere.

[00:10:30]High in the coastal forests of East Africa hides the green mamba, a ghost in the canopy.

[00:10:37]It spends almost its whole life in the trees, its emerald body melting into the leaves until it simply disappears in plain sight.

[00:10:47]You could stand beneath one for an hour and never know.

[00:10:51]It hunts the way it hides, waiting in the branches, then snatching birds, eggs, and bats in a single sudden lunge.

[00:11:01]And forget the old legend of the mamba that chases people down roads. The truth is the opposite.

[00:11:08]The green mamba is shy, secretive, and wants nothing to do with you.

[00:11:13]It would rather slip away through the treetops than be seen at all.

[00:11:18]But its venom is fast-acting neurotoxin, and an untreated bite can turn deadly within hours. The danger was never that it would come for you. It's that you'd never know it was there.

[00:11:31]Silent, unseen, and already gone.

[00:11:34]Every snake so far has earned its fear, but I made you a promise at the very start, and now we've reached it.

[00:11:43]The last one. The most venomous snake on the entire planet.

[00:11:47]This is the inland taipan, and the numbers barely sound real.

[00:11:53]A single bite delivers enough venom to kill around a hundred adult human beings. One bite, a hundred people.

[00:12:02]Inject that same dose into mice, and you could kill a quarter of a million of them.

[00:12:08]Its venom is so precisely tuned to warm-blooded prey that, left untreated, it can stop a human heart in 30 to 45 minutes.

[00:12:18]It lives out on the cracked, sun-baked plains of remote central Australia, so far from any town that almost no one ever crosses its path.

[00:12:27]It even shifts the color of its skin with the seasons.

[00:12:31]Darker in winter to drink in the heat, paler in summer to push it away.

[00:12:37]The locals gave it a fittingly grim nickname, the fierce snake.

[00:12:43]By every measurement we have, no venom on Earth is deadlier.

[00:12:47]Deadliest, loneliest, and almost never seen.

[00:12:51]So, remember the snake I teased at the very start?

[00:12:55]Enough venom in one bite to kill a hundred people. Um, not the cobra, not the mamba.

[00:13:01]This is it, the inland taipan.

[00:13:04]But here's the twist.

[00:13:06]Despite carrying the most lethal venom on Earth, it's shy, reclusive, and so rarely seen that there has never been a single confirmed human death from its bite.

[00:13:18]The deadliest venom alive, and it has never once used it on us.

[00:13:23]So, which one stuck with you?

[00:13:26]Drop its number in the comments. I've got a feeling a lot of you are going with number five, the black mamba, but go ahead and prove me wrong. And if your favorite didn't make the cut, tell me which snake I missed. I read every single comment. Nature didn't build these snakes to be fair. It built them to survive and to win.

[00:13:49]See you in the next one.