Re: snake/spider venom

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> *Venomous snakes appeared even later, and the ancestral food for the
venomous groups was probably small mammals/birds/lizards as well.  It
certainly was not non-avian dinosaurs, since the major venomous groups of
snakes appeared well after the K/T (to the best of my knowledge).

To my knowledge, the clade of venomous snakes (paraphyletic Colubridae and
its descendants) appeared in the Eocene or so.

Besides, selection would act _against_ snake venom being overkill for 65
million years.

> Snake venom is a feeding adaptation, and as such, it must work fast enough
to disable a prey item in a very short period of time (otherwise the prey
escapes a far distance before death or has enough stamina to fight
effectively).

A rat could gnaw any not-too-big snake in two.
        This is also the reason for why cube aka killer jellies are so
horribly poisonous. They live on fish -- fish that could basically swim
through them.