The most venomous snake in the world?

Why can’t anyone agree on the most venomous snake?

Or the most dangerous one. Search either question and every list gives a different answer. Most of them aren’t wrong. They are answering different questions, often with numbers nobody can trace.

Why the lists disagree

They measure different things

“Most toxic venom”, “most venom per bite” and “kills the most people” are three separate questions, and each has a different answer.

Most toxic (mice): inland taipan · Largest yield in our data: forest cobra · Biggest killers: vipers in South Asia and Africa

Lab tests aren’t done the same way

Venom injected into a vein, the belly or under the skin gives a different number for the same snake. Lists often mix them.

4 injection routes in use: SC, IV, IP, IM

Numbers get copied without sources

Figures pass from list to list until nobody knows where they came from. Some turn out to be wrong.

Hook-nosed sea snake: 0.02 (untraced) vs 0.164 mg/kg (published study)

Danger depends on people too

A snake with deadly venom that lives in a remote desert kills fewer people than a common snake near farms and villages with no antivenom nearby.

Inland taipan: no deaths in Australia 2005–2015 (Australian Snakebite Project)

How we tackle it

Separate the questions

Two scores, not one ranking

Venom Hazard asks how dangerous the venom itself is. Human Risk asks how likely a bite is to happen and go badly.

Show the evidence

Every number has a source

Each figure is graded A to D by how well it traces back to an original study.

Keep the disagreements

Conflicts are flagged, not hidden

When sources differ by more than 1.5 times, the species is flagged and every figure stays on record.

Open method

You can check our working

How each score is built, step by step, from LD50 and venom yield to the four risk factors. Scores explained.

Venom Hazard

Snake toxicity

Hover or tap a point for details.

Elapids (cobras, mambas, taipans, sea snakes) Vipers Rear-fanged (colubrids)

The two lab measurements behind Venom Hazard. Across: how toxic the venom is, scored from its LD50. Up: how much venom the snake can produce. A snake needs both to be truly dangerous, and the dashed lines join points with the same Venom Hazard.

Both scores run from 0 to 100 on a log scale: LD50 from 9.27 mg/kg (0) to 0.039 mg/kg (100), and maximum yield from 0.7 mg (0) to 1,102 mg (100). Values past either end are capped. How these scores are built.

Every species on both questions

Hover or tap a point for details.

Elapids (cobras, mambas, taipans, sea snakes) Vipers Rear-fanged (colubrids)
Scores are relative to the species in this dataset, not absolute measures of danger. Species missing a venom yield or enough risk data are left off; see the table below.

Go deeper

How we measure danger

Scores explained

LD50, venom yield, the four Human Risk factors, and how far to trust each number.

 What venom does to the body

Venom types and combinations

Nerve, blood, tissue and muscle toxins, and which snakes combine them.

 Browse

All 94 species

Every snake in our data, with both scores and every number traced to its source.
View all species as a table
SpeciesVenom HazardHuman RiskCombinedData grade
View every ingredient of the scores as a table

Each Combined score is built from six measures: two for Venom Hazard and four for Human Risk. This table shows them all side by side, each as a 0 to 100 score with the figure behind it underneath. Click a column heading to sort. If a number looks wrong to you, we want to know: use Suggest a fix on that row to open a GitHub issue with the species’ current figures filled in, then tell us what should change and where it comes from. Open the species to see where every figure comes from, or read how each measure is scored.

Venom HazardHuman Risk
Review