Customer Reviews

Poisonous Snakes of the World

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I purchased this in 1997 from Dover books which claimed that it had been updated. When I compared it with the original hardback from the 1960's it was obvious that it had not been updated. Despite this, it is still an informative book for those interested in poisonous snakes.

Disregard the reviewers commenting that this book should have been named "Venomous Snakes of the World" as opposed to "Poisonous Snakes of the World." Herpetologists and other scientists like to distinguish between a poison and venom. In general, poisonous substances are viewed as things that need to be ingested, inhaled or otherwise contacted in some way, while venoms are proteinaceous poisons typically injected by a bite or sting. Would not a spitting cobra have to be called a poisonous snake if it spit venom in your eye, the venom entered your blood stream via the capillaries in your eye and killed you? You would have been poisoned by a venom, not envenomated by a bite or sting, right? So all venoms are potential poisons but not all poisons are venoms!

In any case, this book may be old but it still has useful information and it was designed for the purpose of training and assisting in military operations. It has 8 color plates with real images and colored paintings. There are other black and white photos, keys to genera, maps for large geographic regions and each species entry has a brief section of identification, distribution and remarks. There are some line drawings of some species' head scutes/scales (dorasal, ventral and some lateral). This book certainly delivers for it's intended purpose.

I actually work at a zoo as a herpetologist and have to constantly tell people, if it bites you and you die, it's venomous, if you eat it or rub on it and you die, it's poisonous. There are no such things as venomous mushrooms!. SNAKES ARE VENOMOUS! Hard to believe they made that mistake.

First things first: they are VENOMOUS SNAKES NOT POISONOUS. I agree with the other review it is very backward.